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Phone call to Tymoshenko triggers probe
Journal Staff Report

KIEV, Sept. 17 – Ukraine’s SBU security service launched an investigation into an anonymous phone call telling opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko that she will “cough up blood” if she continues to criticize President Viktor Yanukovych in Europe.

The unidentified man apparently also said Tymoshenko’s closest ally, Oleksandr Turchynov, “will be jailed” to give her a lesson after European political figures had recently issued a critical statement about democracy in Ukraine.

“I received a telephone call from the unknown man who in Russian language had stressed that nobody will let me go unpunished for humiliating Viktor Fedorovych [Yanukovych] abroad,” Tymoshenko said quoted by her press service.

The man told Tymoshenko that she will “cough up blood” and will “remember for a long time” her recent trip to Brussels for a European People’s Party meeting, which approved a resolution critical of Yanukovych’s policy.

“The payment for that will be the arrest of Oleksandr Turchynov, and this is only the beginning,” the man allegedly told Tymoshenko.

The call comes ahead of Yanukovych’s upcoming trip to Brussels and may undermine his efforts at persuading the European leaders that he is committed to democracy.

International political leaders and media watchdogs have recently repeatedly criticized the Yanukovych administration for alleged “restrictions” that had been imposed on mass media in Ukraine.

Yanukovych on Friday reacted by ordering the SBU and other law enforcement agencies to investigate the phone call and to find the man who had allegedly made the threats.

Yanukovych also offered protection for Tymoshenko.

Valeriy Kooroshkovskiy, the chief of the SBU, said the security service will most likely be able to detect those who had made the anonymous phone call.

“We always find those who make anonymous calls,” he said at a press conference Friday. “We hope that Tymoshenko will provide exhaustive information and will of course find them.”

Meanwhile, Tymoshenko’s ally, Turchynov, has fled as the SBU has been increasingly trying to find him over the past several days in connection with a criminal investigation over confiscation of natural gas from RosUkrEnergo in January 2009.

Turchynov was already questioned on the case by SBU on Sept. 8.

Turchynov’s relatives have been recently questioned by SBU, while Turchynov himself went on a “business trip” to an undisclosed location, according to Tymoshenko.

“A terror against Turchynov has begun,” Tymoshenko said.

Khoroshkovskiy confirmed that SBU was interested in finding Turchynov.

“Right now we cannot find Mr. Turchynov at the address that he has provided,” Khortoshkovskiy said. “So, our investigators have to go through all locations that we know of in order to find him.”

“If Mr. Turchynov can see us,” Khorshkovskiy said addressing television cameras, “let him tells where exactly physically he is.”

The pressure on Tymoshenko and her party has increased over the past weeks to a point that she had threatened to boycott upcoming elections in four regions.

Tymoshenko accused the presidential administration of manipulations and hijacking her party branches – and ability to nominate candidates at local elections - in Kiev and Lviv, as well as working on the same issue in Kharkiv, Luhansk and Ivano-Frankivsk.

Tymoshenko recently asked foreign diplomats to keep an eye on the authorities to prevent fraud at upcoming local elections.

Bowing to international pressure, Yanukovych’s coalition on Aug. 30 voted to amend controversial election legislation, but Tymoshenko said there was still room for fraud.

The legislation was last month criticized by two powerful pro-democracy institutes from the U.S., the International Republican Institute and by the National Democratic Institute, which accused Yanukovych of “restricting” political competition. (tl/ez)




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