Jailed Ukrainian Leader’s Husband Seeks Asylum in Czech Republic

Oleksandr Tymoshenko, Ms. Tymoshenko’s husband, left Ukraine late last year and formally applied to the Czech government for asylum shortly before the new year, said Natalya Lysova, a spokeswoman for Ms. Tymoshenko’s Batkivshchyna Party.

Ms. Lysova said that he had not received an answer, but that “his chances are good because the whole world has acknowledged a political prosecution of Yulia Vladimirovna Tymoshenko is taking place in Ukraine, and all the European countries and the United States have condemned it.”

Mr. Tymoshenko has been named as a defendant in criminal cases involving United Energy Systems of Ukraine, a company Ms. Tymoshenko ran in the 1990s. The cases have been reopened in recent months.

Ms. Tymoshenko, 51, was sentenced to seven years in prison last fall on charges that she had harmed Ukraine’s interests by agreeing to pay Russia a high price for natural gas. Western governments widely condemned the case as politically motivated.

Ukraine’s opposition hopes to make gains in upcoming parliamentary elections, and Ms. Tymoshenko, one of the leaders of the 2004 pro-Western Orange Revolution, remains a leader capable of rallying forces that oppose President Viktor F. Yanukovich.

Oleksandr Tymoshenko, whom Ms. Tymoshenko married at age 19, was her partner in United Energy Systems, which sold Russian natural gas to Ukrainian customers. He was also implicated in earlier cases against his wife related to the company and served time in jail.

In 2005, Ukraine’s prosecutor general dismissed a range of criminal cases involving United Energy Systems. Some of them were revived this fall, however, after Ms. Tymoshenko was convicted over a gas deal with Russia. Ms. Tymoshenko is facing accusations of using the company to hide earnings, evade taxes and embezzle state funds.

Ms. Tymoshenko remained defiant through her trial and incarceration, and recently published a column accusing Mr. Yanukovich of “godlessness, inhumanity and criminality.” Last week, she was abruptly transferred from a detention center near Kyiv, the capital, to a prison camp 300 miles east of the city, reducing her access to the press and the public.

Ms. Tymoshenko’s daughter, Yevhenia Carr, remains in Ukraine and has not applied for asylum, Ms. Lysova said.