Veteran Ukrainian politician Yulia Tymoshenko seemed to have retired from the political scene forever, spending her final years on the sidelines of key events. However, unexpected accusations of bribing members of parliament have thrust her back into the center of the country's political life.
The Tymoshenko scandal reflects the fact that the focus of Ukrainian politics is once again shifting towards parliament. The fight for MPs' votes is heating up again, and the internal political crisis in Ukraine is entering a new phase, opening up space even for politicians who were already almost forgotten.
To recount in detail the political career of Yulia Tymoshenko would be to recount the history of the first twenty-five years of independent Ukraine. In short, she was a prominent figure in the new world of Ukrainian business in the 1990s, earning her the nickname “the gas princess.” She entered politics through her connections with the then prime minister, now a convicted criminal, Pavlo Lazarenko, and became an equally prominent representative of the opposition to the then president Leonid Kuchma. She was first arrested in 2001 and spent forty days in detention.
In the mid-2000s, Tymoshenko became one of the symbols of the Orange Revolution, after which she reached the peak of her career - she served as prime minister twice and ran for president. After her opponent Viktor Yanukovych won the 2010 presidential election, Tymoshenko again became an opposition leader, but also a victim of political persecution, and spent more than two years in prison. After the second Maidan Revolution in 2014, she was triumphantly released, but was again defeated in the presidential election, this time by Petro Poroshenko.
After that, her political career began to fade, because she was too tied to the past. The final blow was dealt by the 2019 presidential campaign: until then, she was still considered a serious alternative to Poroshenko, but the actor and then political outsider Volodymyr Zelensky disrupted the plans of all the old elites.
Tymoshenko finished third in those elections (behind Zelensky and Poroshenko), and the parliamentary elections held that same year brought her Batkivshchina (Fatherland) party a modest parliamentary caucus. Marginalized, she took on the role of a socially conservative populist, appealing primarily to rural voters in agricultural regions.
With the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion, Tymoshenko almost disappeared from the public eye, failing to find her place in the new patriotic consensus. She became a critic of the authorities, condemning the new law on mobilization and restrictions on consular services for Ukrainians abroad. At the same time, she built the image of a “Ukrainian Trumpist”: she fought against the legalization of cannabis, the so-called “gender agenda” and other, in her opinion, threats to patriarchal Ukraine.
She would occasionally be embroiled in minor political scandals, such as one involving a luxury vacation in Dubai during the height of the war. During the summer of 2025, she participated in a campaign to limit the powers of the independent anti-corruption institutions NABU and SAP, calling them instruments of “external control” and plans to reduce their powers an act of “decolonization.” All of this was in line with her new image as a socially conservative anti-globalist.
Even after Zelensky withdrew his attack on NABU, Tymoshenko's parliamentary group stubbornly refused to vote to restore full powers to the institution. Her reaction seemed to reflect the resentment of the old elites dissatisfied with real attempts to crack down on the corruption that had been destroying the country for years.
Tymoshenko’s supporters claim that the charges of bribing MPs, as well as the searches of her office, are NABU’s revenge for her role in the crackdown on anti-corruption institutions last summer. In reality, it is more likely that she is just the latest victim of a broad purge of elites that began last fall with the release of the so-called Mindich tapes. After the first revelations and resignations (even the seemingly all-powerful head of the presidential administration, Andriy Yermak, was forced to step down), NABU gained new confidence.
Now, corruption investigators have turned their attention to MPs. A few weeks ago, a group of corrupt MPs was exposed. The alleged leader of the group, Yuriy Kiselj, a friend of President Zelensky, and the other members, all hail from Kryvyi Rih, the president's hometown.
Now it’s Tymoshenko’s turn. Given how unpopular she is with a large part of the Ukrainian public, the accusations of vote-buying do not seem incredible. After all, during her political rise, such practices were almost commonplace. In recordings released by NABU, a voice resembling hers openly promises deputies $10.000 a month in exchange for voting “properly.”
Another interesting revelation from the recordings is Tymoshenko’s alleged statement that her goal was to “overthrow the majority.” In other words, the potential targets of the bribery were deputies from the presidential faction Servant of the People. This connects the story of the politician who appeared to have been caught red-handed to broader processes in the Ukrainian parliament.
After several years during which the Supreme Rada was almost directly subordinated to the presidential administration, the parliament is regaining the political subjectivity granted to it by the Constitution. While just a few years ago, MPs voluntarily gave up their mandates because they saw no prospects, today their influence and the value of their votes are growing again.
A one-party majority is Zelensky’s mainstay, which is why the ruling party and its ambitious parliamentary group leader, David Arahamiya, want complete control over decision-making. As a reminder, deputies from the Servant of the People party recently protested by abstaining from a vote on the president’s proposed cabinet reshuffle, preventing a quorum. The opposition wants to further deepen the cracks in this fractured monolith: a voice attributed to Tymoshenko in recordings urged colleagues not to vote for the new appointments.
For several months now, rumors have been circulating in Kiev about a possible “parliamentary coup” that would lead to the formation of a new majority capable of appointing a new government, limiting Zelensky’s powers, or even removing him from office, replacing him with the speaker of the parliament. In the context of increased parliamentary activity, it seems that Tymoshenko has decided to strengthen her position ahead of a possible political battle. Since the scandal with Mindich broke out, she has been calling for the resignation of the government and the formation of a “national unity coalition” in parliament, which would also include representatives of the opposition.
The court ordered Tymoshenko to post bail in the amount of 33 million hryvnias (over 650.000 euros), banned her from leaving the Kyiv region and from communicating with sixty-six deputies. In her own style, the former prime minister used the court hearing to attract maximum public attention, defend her position and criticize the government. After all, trials and prison sentences have repeatedly helped her return to the very top of Ukrainian politics.
Repeating those successes today will be much harder, given how much time has passed and how much the country has changed. Yet the case of Yulia Tymoshenko shows that the anti-corruption shockwaves of last fall have caused such powerful political waves in Ukraine that they have brought to the surface even those who have long been in the depths, actors who could still play a role in a fight in which they have already been written off.
Text taken from the portal carnegieendowment.org
Prepared by: SS
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