[attach id=246261 size="medium"]Ukraine’s former Interior Minister Yuri Lutsenko kissing his wife Irina after leaving a prison in the settlement of Makoshino, some 220 kilometres northeast of Kiev, yesterday. Photo: Reuters[/attach]
Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich pardoned two allies of his main foe, ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, yesterday in a move to appease Western critics but gave no sign of being ready to free the imprisoned opposition leader.
The European Union has curbed relations with the former Soviet republic over what it regards as politically-motivated prosecutions of political rivals by the Yanukovich leadership.
A senior EU official cautiously welcomed the pardons for former Interior Minister Yuri Lutsenko and ex-ecology minister Heorhiy Filipchuk as an initial but important step.
The move, made against a backdrop of heightened political tension in Kiev, was the first hint of any relaxation in a campaign against Tymoshenko and her allies in which several of her ministers have been jailed or have fled abroad.
Lutsenko had been serving a four-year jail term and Filipchuk a suspended two-year sentence, both on convictions for abuse of office. Their pardon followed a parliamentary standoff last week between the re-energised opposition and Yanukovich’s Party of the Regions that led to pro-Yanukovich deputies holding a rival session in a separate building.
No country can call itself democratic while there are political prisoners
Lutsenko, 48, who was held at a jail 230 kilometres north of Kiev, only last week saw his appeal against conviction rejected by a high court.
In a live telephone message played by loudspeaker to an opposition meeting in Kiev yesterday shortly after his release, Lutsenko urged opposition supporters to pursue public protests.
“Policy is not made by the presidential administration, nor by Parliament. It is made out there on the squares. We triumphed there before and we will triumph there again,” he declared, referring to the 2004 “Orange Revolution” protests which doomed Yanukovich’s first run for the presidency.
The United States and the EU say prosecutions of Tymoshenko and former members of her government are politically motivated.
The EU has made their release a condition for signing deals on trade and political association with Kiev in November, and has said those agreements could be shelved for years unless progress is made on justice and other issues by next month.
In a message on Twitter, Stefan Fuele, the EU’s enlargement commissioner and pointman on Eastern Europe, welcomed Yanukovich’s pardoning of the ex-ministers as a “first but important step to deal with selective justice”.
Despite yesterday’s decree, Yanukovich showed no signs of clemency for Tymoshenko, who is serving a seven-year jail sentence also for abuse of office, but the pardons for Lutsenko and Filipchuk are likely now to swing the focus onto her fate.
The peasant-braided, 52-year-old one-time heroine of the “Orange Revolution” came close to beating Yanukovich in a bitter run-off for President in February 2010 and is regarded as his fiercest challenger.
She says her prosecution is an act of political vengeance.
World heavyweight boxer Vitaly Klitschko, an opposition leader, declared to about six thousand opposition supporters massed in central Kiev yesterday that securing Tymoshenko’s release was a priority for the united opposition.
“No country can call itself democratic while there are political prisoners. We will fight for Yulia Tymoshenko and others who are locked up to be freed,” he said.