Tymoshenko develops unknown skin ailment - lawyer
KHARKIV. July 19 (Interfax) - Former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko's defense lawyer Serhiy Vlasenko claims that the ex-premier has developed an unknown skin ailment that Kharkiv doctors have failed to identify.
According to the lawyer, a rash covered half of Tymoshenko's body about two weeks ago, prompting her doctors to suspend the treatment she had been receiving for her ailing back and to focus on the skin ailment instead because the two types of treatment cannot be combined, Vlasenko said.
As a result, her back problem has worsened, he said.
Tymoshenko is now in a hospital in Kharkiv where she was transferred from the Kharkiv penal colony two months ago.
In October 2011, Kyiv's Pecherskiy Court sentenced the ex-prime minister to seven years in prison on charges of abuse of office in signing the 2009 gas contract with Russia. In December 2011, Tymoshenko was brought form a pretrial detention center in Kyiv to the Kachanovskaya colony in Kharkiv.
Her lawyers have repeatedly insisted that she should be examined by an independent panel of physicians as Tymoshenko has no trust in Ukrainian doctors.
On May 5, Tymoshenko was moved from prison to Kharkiv's hospital No. 5. She was receiving treatment prescribed by German physicians from the Charite clinic in Berlin.