Lots of speculation in the German media that when their foreign minister, Guido Westerwelle returns home from his current visit to Kyiv on Friday, he may be taking back Yulia Tymoshenko with him , as passenger on his plane.
Other top Euro-deputies are 'cautiously optimistic' too.
But Ukrainian foreign minister Kozhara plays down hopes and keeps repeating the threadbare mantra - 'the Tymoshenko problem' can only be resolved within a constitutional and legal framework . [Kozhara claims that "millions of people in Ukraine believe Tymoshenko committed a crime". Well millions believe she was 'stitched up' too, most Ukrainians consider judges and police to be completely corrupt... and think Yanukovych and Kozhara are wankers ...so what?]
But whatever happens, Yanukovych has already been branded forever for persecuting his greatest political rival. If the Vilnius summit ends in failure, he will get the blame.
Serhiy Vysotsky, in Liga.net thinks Yanukovych may be being steered by the formula: Free Tymoshenko, sign Agreement, receive lots of foreign loans...
If Tymoshenko is released and the AA and DCFTA agreements are successfully signed, any loans will be drip-fed piecemeal, in stages. Pressure on Yanukovych to behave according to European standards will be maintained until the 2015 presidential elections and beyond.
Even from abroad, Tymoshenko will continue to be an active political player.
Vysotsky concludes: Some mistakes in politics are impossible to correct - they stick to you for the rest of your life. The chances of Yanukovych cleansing his reputation in the West are slim. Trading political hostages, once the ransom has been received, can only work once. After this, such a politician will always be perceived as small-time wheeler-dealer, not as an equal partner. Tymoshenko is a problem that will remain with Yanukovych forever, regardless of the model of external integration eventually selected.
p.s. Several months after Viktor Yushchenko became president, Adrian Karatnycky published a large piece in the 'NYT' entitled: "Ukraine's Orange Revolution"
It contained the following passage:
"According to the telephone intercepts, the [2004 presidential election] fraud involved some of the country's highest officials. In addition to Medvedchuk and Kivalov, the conspiracy included Eduard Prutnik, a key aide to Yanukovich, Serhiy Lyovochkin, the president's first assistant, and Serhiy Klyuyev, a major fundraiser for the Yanukovich campaign whose brother was the deputy prime minister responsible for Ukraine's lucrative energy sector."
Transcripts of telephone conversations exposing the skulduggery between the head of President Leonid Kuchma's staff, Viktor Medvedchuk, and Yuri Levenets, [a Yanukovich campaign director and notable spin doctor], were also included in the NYT article.
Well, several days ago Levenets, known as the "patriarch of Ukrainian polit-technologists", passed away.
He worked many times for Yanukovych during various election campaigns. However, in 2010 he assisted Yulia Tymoshenko's team. In recent years he was close to his alleged 'partner in crime', current head of the president's administration, Serhiy Lyovochkin, . And there had been rumours he was recently acting as a consultant to Vitaliy Klychko....
Some overblown Ukrainian political experts enter into a world of fantasy and claim Levenets was "a super-powerful intellect, who appear once every hundred - two hundred years." ..
[Had he been charged and sentenced for organising a massive election fraud almost a decade ago this intellect may have useful when trying to escape from jail...]
p.p.s. They all 'piss into the same pot', as they say in my home town....
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