News.Kyiv.Me.

Ukrainian Parliament Fails to Adopt Tymoshenko Law for EU Accord

Ukrainian lawmakers failed to pass a
bill allowing jailed ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko to get
medical treatment abroad, a key demand in talks to sign a trade
pact with the European Union.

Parliament in the capital, Kyiv, today rejected six drafts
of a bill on Tymoshenko, who’s serving a seven-year sentence
following an abuse-of-office conviction the 28-member EU sees as
selective justice. Opposition lawmakers requested Ukraine’s
pardoning commission meet to seal her release, though President
Viktor Yanukovych has said in the past that he can’t pardon her.

European governments are urging the former Soviet republic
to meet EU demands so it can seal an association agreement at a
Nov. 28-29 summit in the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius. The
chance of Ukraine signing the accord is less than 50 percent,
Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said yesterday.

Tymoshenko’s daughter, Eugenia, said yesterday in an
interview that Yanukovych is sabotaging the EU deal, with
deputies from his Party of Regions blocking efforts to let her
mother, a political rival of the Ukrainian leader, get care for
chronic back pain in Germany. Ukraine isn’t changing its plans
to sign the EU treaty, Premier Mykola Azarov said yesterday in
St. Petersburg, Russia.

The yield on the government’s 2023 dollar bond was up 5
basis points, or 0.05 percentage point, to 9.711 percent at
11:29 a.m. in Kyiv. The cost to insure Ukrainian debt against
non-payment for five years rose 5 basis point to 965 percent
today, according to data complied by Bloomberg.

To contact the reporters on this story:
Daryna Krasnolutska in Kyiv at
dkrasnolutsk@bloomberg.net;
Kateryna Choursina in Kyiv at
kchoursina@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Balazs Penz at
bpenz@bloomberg.net