KIEV, Dec. 8 – Following a 12-hour court session at the jail cell bedside of opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko, the judge ruled Thursday she must be detained for two months based on new charges.

Tymoshenko, who already spent the past four months in jail, is now trying to appeal the seven-year sentence given her in October. The latest ruling would make her release impossible even if she wins the appeal later this month.

The developments suggest that Tymoshenko will not be released from jail before December 19 summit in Kiev between Ukraine and the European Union, potentially undermining the country’s European integration.

The bizarre court session from within the jail has already been criticized by the European People’s Party, the most powerful political group in the European Parliament, as “barbaric.”

But there is a growing concern among politicians in Ukraine that the court session was staged by the security service SBU specifically to disrupt the summit, undermine the planned political association agreement with the EU and potentially push Ukraine towards closer cooperation with Russia.

“I think this is an obvious 100% international provocation, which has been carried out by the SBU to disrupt every possibility of even initialing the agreement,” Taras Chornovil, a former ally of President Viktor Yanukovych, now an independent lawmaker.

Ukraine and the EU were supposed to initial the political association and free trade agreement on December 19. The agreement was next year supposed to be signed and ratified by lawmakers before it takes affect, opening way for greater cooperation between Ukraine and the EU.

Russia has been always uneasy about Ukraine’s increasing cooperation with the EU as Moscow has been trying to forge its own political alliance, called the Euro-Asian Union, which includes Kazakhstan and Belarus, and has already invited Ukraine to join.

Yanukovych last month even flirted with an idea of skipping the EU summit in Kiev on December 19 and traveling for the Euro-Asian Union summit in Moscow on the same day instead.

Asked to comment on the Tymoshenko ruling on Thursday, Yanukovych said: “It’s a life situation that anyone can find himself in.”

“I am not pleased that this is happening,” Yanukovych said. “I wouldn’t wish anybody to get trapped in a situation like this.”

The developments come as Ukraine and Russia have been making progress in negotiating an important natural gas agreement that may lead to lower prices for Russian gas.

The issue is extremely important for Yanukovych, whose governing Regions Party has been facing serious loss of confidence ahead of the parliamentary elections in October 2012. The deal with Russia would allow his government to prevent steep social spending cuts, potentially helping the Regions Party at the election.

Dmytro Firtash, a powerful businessman who is thought to have financed Yanukovych’s presidential campaign and whose nitrogen fertilizer businesses depend on cheap Russian gas, may have played a role in the latest developments, Chornovil said.

Energy Minister Yuriy Boyko, who is the principle negotiator in gas talks with Russia, and SBU chief Valeriy Khoroshkovskiy, whose agents demanded Tymoshenko’s arrest in the latest bizarre court session, are thought to be close allies of Firtash.

“If you take into account the speculation that the Firtash group is, to put it mildly, interested in Russian issues, and Russia has a tool to influence them, this becomes a revealing thing,” Chornovil said. (tl/ez)