Ukrainian ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, who is serving a seven-year jail term over her role in the signing of a 2009 gas deal with Russia, has refused to continue medial treatment for spinal disk herniation, Ukrainian Deputy Health Minister Olexandr Tolstanov said on Tuesday.
Last week, Tymoshenko, who has suffered from severe spinal pain, was moved to a hospital in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkov where her penal colony is located.
Tolstanov said German doctor Lutz Harms who was overseeing Tymoshenko’s treatment told him that “Yulia Volodymyrivna [Tymoshenko] refused to undergo medical procedures,” the Unian news agency reported.
According to Tolstanov, Tymoshenko’s move was in protest against the publication of details about the procedures she was undergoing in the media.
A list of procedures prescribed to Tymoshenko has been published on the Ukrainian penitentiary authority’s website.
Tymoshenko’s daughter Yevheniya accused journalists of “illegally” publishing “confidential” information about her mother’s health.
Tolstanov said hospital doctors proposed several times that Tymoshenko continue treatment, but she repeatedly refused, which he said “was of course documented.”
He also said Harms had registered “positive improvement” in Tymoshenko’s health.
Meanwhile, the UNN news agency quoted an unidentified source in Tymoshenko’s Batkivshchina (Fatherland) party as saying the doctor had decided to go back to Germany following repeated requests from senior party members.
A leader of the 2004 pro-democracy mass protests known as the Orange Revolution, Tymoshenko has been jailed for seven years behind bars for pushing through the 2009 gas deal with Russia, which Ukrainian authorities say caused multi-billion-dollar damage to the country’s economy.
Tymoshenko denies wrongdoing, saying her trial was part of President Viktor Yanukovych’s crackdown on his political rivals, an allegation dismissed by Ukrainian officials.
