Live crossover: Former PM Tymoshenko enters Ukraine presidential race
In less than two months, Ukrainians will head to the polls to elect a new president. Former Prime Minister, Yulia Tymoshenko, who was recently released after two years in prison, has now officially entered the presidential race, running under a banner of “Ukrainian unity.” Our correspondent Filio Kontrafouri reports from Kyiv.
Yulia Tymoshenko is the third candidate to officially announce that she’ll be taking part in the presidential race in May.
She will be running, among others, against Petro Poroshenko, a billionaire here known as “the chocolate king” and Vitali Klitschko, a former boxer. Now both of the men have yet to announce they will be running.
Tymoshenko may be the most well-known of the candidates but she is also a very controversial figure in Ukraine.
In the latest poll published here, she runs third, behind Klitschko and Poroshenko with a little over eight percent -while Poroshenko appears first with almost 25 percent.
Ukrainians remain suspicious about anyone with ties to previous governments that have been rampant with corruption.
Yulia Tymoshenko has already served twice in the Ukrainian government as prime minister and was imprisoned in 2011 on corruption charges.
So feelings towards her face are very much mixed as people question whether she can be part of the new government.