Yanukovych is trying to prevent Tymoshenko from running in 2015 elections - Tymoshenko's daughter
KYIV. Dec 29 (Interfax) - Yevgeniya, the daughter of Ukraine's former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko, has called on the world community to use tough sanctions to increase pressure on the Ukrainian authorities to free Yulia Tymoshenko from prison.
"Yanukovych's main purpose is to keep my mother in prison during the 2015 elections. Absolutely everyone understands that now. We understand that we can't do anything about it in Ukraine by ourselves. That's why we need the support of the international community," Tymoshenko said in an interview with Voice of America, excerpts from which were posted on the Yulia Tymoshenko official website on Saturday.
Yevgeniya Tymoshenko believes Ukraine is rapidly turning into a police state. "It's not an exaggeration. Ukraine is turning into a police state, a dictatorship. My mother warned the whole world about that before the parliamentary elections," she said.
U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine John Tefft earlier said in an interview with the Internet publication Ukrainska Pravda that the U.S. administration will consider Tymoshenko's prevention from running in the 2015 presidential elections as a violation of democratic standards.
On August 5, 2011, Tymoshenko was taken into custody in the courtroom. On October 11, the Kyiv Pechersky Court sentenced her to seven years in prison for exceeding her powers when signing the gas supply contracts with Russia in 2009.
Yulia Tymoshenko has been serving her sentence in the Kachanovskaya penal colony in Kharkiv since December 2001. She is now receiving treatment in a Kharkiv hospital.