KIEV, Dec. 10 – The U.S. cancelled its entry visa for Renat Kuzmin, Ukraine’s first deputy prosecutor general, who is believed to be an architect of opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko’s seven-year imprisonment.

U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine John Tefft informed the prosecutor on October 19 that his 5-year multiple entry visa had been cancelled “without providing further explanations,” Kuzmin wrote in a letter to U.S. President Barack Obama.

The move came less than a month after the U.S. Senate had unanimously approved a resolution demanding the release of Tymoshenko and calling for visa restrictions against those responsible for her jail sentence.

The news exploded the Ukrainian Internet community with hundreds of bloggers cheering and praising the U.S. government’s move.

“The best news of the day,” blogger Solomia-solia wrote on Monday. “I wish we had such news everyday. This would lead to a change.”

“They finally stopped letting gangsters in decent countries,” blogger Litera wrote. “Let them spend holidays in Kazakhstan on a beautiful Caspian Sea coast.”

“Dear U.S. Department of State, thank you,” blogger Petrenko_O wrote.

Kuzmin was seeking to travel to the U.S. in September to address the U.S. Congress and media outlets about a role that Tymoshenko had allegedly played in the murder of a Ukrainian politician, Yevhen Shcherban, in 1996.

He also planned to obtain evidence in the murder case by interrogating several former Ukrainian officials, including former Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko, who had just completed his jail sentence in the U.S. for money laundering.

Kuzmin went on to accuse the U.S. Department of Justice of plotting a plan that would lead to his own arrest while in the U.S. and derail the murder investigation.

“The goal of my arrest was the discredit of my person before American authorities and thus corroborate that my actions' were illegal in the USA,” Kuzmin wrote. “I was to be incriminated by alleging that I coerced a witness, Mykola Melnychenko, to give evidence in the murder case.”

Melnychenko, a former bodyguard of former President Leonid Kuchma, is currently in Ukraine and is apparently cooperating with the prosecutor’s office on several other investigations.

Kuzmin said the arrest plan, reported by Melnychenko, was part of a bigger effort pushed for by Oleksandr Tymoshenko, Yulia’s husband, in order to stop investigations against his wife.

“The initiators of the plan intended to force termination not only of this murder investigation by Ukrainian authorities, but also other crimes of which Mrs. Tymoshenko is accused,” Kuzmin wrote.

Oleksandr Tymoshenko, in a statement released on Monday, called on the U.S. to cancel visa for President Viktor Yanukovych and 49 other top government and law enforcement officials for running political persecutions.

He also said the U.S. should target $52 billion in assets that had been stolen and illegally channeled out of Ukraine by the officials over the past two years.

“I hope the cancelling of the visa for Kuzmin will become the first step in a massive campaign by the West concerning the sanctions against those officials that cause political terror and repressions,” Tymoshenko said.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on November 29 sharply criticized Ukraine’s October 28 elections and expressed concern about selective prosecution of opposition leaders.

“Ukraine’s October elections were a step backwards for democracy and we remain deeply concerned about the selective prosecution of opposition leaders,” Clinton said in a speech on Europe at the Brookings Institution.

Former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, 51, was sentenced to seven years in prison in October 2011 for abusing power while negotiating and signing 10-year natural gas agreement with Russia in January 2009.

The U.S. and the European Union have condemned her jailing as an example of selective justice and Brussels has shelved landmark deals on free trade and political association with Kiev over the issue. (tl/ez)