She came from a poor background, but she became Ukraine's "gas princess" by virtue of her beauty, she was the prime minister of Ukraine, but she was arrested and imprisoned twice, she failed to attack the presidential throne 3 times, and now she is only one step away from the peak of Ukrainian power.
How did Tymoshenko, a gas princess, a beautiful politician, a prison prisoner, known as the "Rose of Ukraine," break out of the male-dominated Ukrainian political scene?
In Tymoshenko's own words: "I know very well how to use my capital to preserve my position in this male-dominated political circle." ”
Unexpected call
Yulia was born on November 27, 1960, to a poor family in the city of Dnipropetrovsk in eastern Ukraine, and the arrival of the child filled the family with hope.
When Yulia was 3 years old, her father was accidentally killed, and her meager mother had to raise her young children alone. Because of her poor living conditions, Yulia was often ostracized and ridiculed by the children of wealthy families.
Once, Yulia wanted to join the school's football team, but was ridiculed by the boys, Yulia resolutely stood up to the boys to "shout", and even forced them to hide in the men's toilet.
Just when the boys thought Yulia had given up, she lit the toilet on fire, and the boys in the toilet swarmed out, and since then, there has been a girl of equal level to them on the court that the boys have occupied.
When she grew up, God seemed to care for this girl, and even when she grew up in a poor family, Yulia was still very moving, which became the biggest capital for her to seize opportunities in the future.
It all started with a wrong phone call.
When Yulia was 18 years old, she was at home worrying about college tuition when the phone rang. Yulia answered the phone, and there came the voice of a strange man.
After a few small talks, the man found himself making the wrong call, but the pleasant voice on the other side of the phone piqued his interest. The man began to find various reasons and topics to talk to Yulia, chatting and chatting, and the man accidentally mentioned his father who was an official.
When Yulia heard that the other party was the son of an official, she realized that her chance to change her fate was at this moment. The clever Yulia followed each other's topics, and the more the two talked, the more speculative they became, and before the phone hung up, the man proposed to meet.
In this way, a phone call connected his marriage to her, and gave Yulia a chance to emerge. In a year since that phone call was hung up, Yulia had gone from love to marriage at the speed of light.
The person who made the wrong call was Alexander Tymoshenko, who came from a family of middle-class eunuchs in the Soviet Union, and Yulia Tymoshenko, who inherited her husband's surname, successfully completed her university studies with the financial support of her husband.
Gas Princess
After his marriage, Tymoshenko's outstanding business acumen soon attracted the attention of his father-in-law, Gennady Tymoshenko, who, although born into poverty, was a treasure to marry into his family, because Alexander was not at all interested in business.
In 1989, when Ukraine was just allowed to set up private enterprises, Tymoshenko, who was still an economist, resigned decisively, went to the sea to do business, and opened his own company, the Terminal Youth Center.
With its excellent business acumen and extraordinary courage, this small company has done a good job. His father-in-law, Gennady Tymoshenko, was in politics and business at the same time, and the local cinema and videotape rental shop were his business, and the business was very prosperous.
As his daughter-in-law, Tymoshenko naturally became his right-hand man.
Soon after, Gennady was promoted to mayor, no longer suitable for direct business, and Tymoshenko stepped forward to become the head of the family business.
Compared with his father-in-law, Tymoshenko is more business-minded and ambitious. Backed by the big tree of the district mayor's father-in-law, she joined forces with another local partner with a very background to set up the "Ukrainian Oil Company".
If the development is carried out step by step, Tymoshenko will become a brilliant female entrepreneur in the future, which is a sure thing, and the occurrence of one thing has changed her fate again.
In 1991, when the mighty Soviet Union collapsed and Ukraine suddenly became an independent country, all order in the country was blank, waiting for the powerful to smear on it.
Before the collapse of the Soviet Union, Tymoshenko's career was still regional, and after the independence of Ukraine, her business began to flourish, rapidly growing into a state-level enterprise with tentacles all over Ukraine.
In 1992, the "Ukrainian Oil Company" became a special supplier of petroleum products to the Oblast. At this time, Tymoshenko met a man who could be said to have added countless barrels of oil to her in-depth career, and the speed of development increased sharply.
This was Pavel Lazarenko, then governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region, and Tymoshenko, 32, knew how to use his "special advantage."
With the help of Lazarenko, Tymoshenko's business in the local area was smooth sailing, and in just 4 years, the "Ukrainian Oil Company" was reorganized into the "Ukrainian Unified Energy Company".
In 1996, when Lazarenko became Prime Minister of Ukraine, he proposed a grand plan to solve Ukraine's energy crisis by forming a supply network of regional Ukrainian energy companies.
After this was done, Lazarenko handed over all of its gas orders from Russia to Ukraine to Tymoshenko, and in 1996, The Annual Turnover of Unified Energy reached $10 billion.
With the help of this man, Tymoshenko became the largest importer of Russian natural gas and the largest supplier of natural gas in Ukraine, becoming the "gas princess" in people's mouths, making a lot of money.
With the help of "natural gas", Tymoshenko's business empire expanded rapidly.
In less than 10 years, in addition to the gas company, she controlled more than 20 of Ukraine's largest enterprises, airlines and banks, and 20% of Ukraine's GDP was in the hands of this woman, and it is unimaginable how rich she is.
It is rumored that after becoming a billionaire woman, for her own safety, Tymoshenko equipped herself with a professional team of bodyguards to protect her safety day and night.
And the members of these bodyguard regiments, all made up of former Soviet special forces, are enough to have as many as a platoon.
Beauty politician
Tymoshenko, who is already at the top of the wealth, has greater ambitions - to engage in politics.
Tymoshenko has been consciously involved in politics since 1996, and with the help of Prime Minister Lazarenko and Tymoshenko's own outstanding conditions, she successfully entered the Parliament in 1997 with a staggering 92% vote, becoming a rare female member of the Congress.
While Tymoshenko was preparing to make a big splash in Ukrainian politics, her powerful ally Lazarenko fell behind him after being exposed to corruption.
Doing business to such a point as Tymoshenko, personal feelings are no longer important, as soon as Lazarenko fell, Tymoshenko turned his head and defected to President Kuchma, and incidentally found himself a "political lover" Yushchenko.
Beautiful, rich, and able to work women who do not like, with the help of Kuchma and the cooperation of Yushchenko, in 1999, Yushchenko became the prime minister of Ukraine, and Tymoshenko sat in the position of deputy prime minister of Ukraine, mainly responsible for energy.
As an energy oligarchy also in charge of energy, it is true that it is earned hemp.
After Tymoshenko took charge of energy, he listed oil as a public tender, and the final transaction price was 4 times higher than the president promised $50 per ton.
This touched the interests of President Kuchma and the oil oligarchs behind him, and after a political struggle, Yushchenko and Tymoshenko were dismissed as prime ministers.
In January 2001, Tymoshenko was charged with bribery, smuggling, and other crimes, and spent 42 days in prison. More than a month in prison filled Tymoshenko with anger.
After his release from prison, Tymoshenko found his old partner Yushchenko and decided to fight back, giving speeches in the streets of various Ukrainian cities, attacking Kuchma's corruption, but to no avail, and was quickly calmed down by Kuchma.
In 2004, the new Ukrainian presidential election began in full swing, Kuchma had been re-elected, publicly shouted that he would not participate in the election this time, and the presidential throne would be created between Yanukovych and Yushchenko.
Yanukovych won after the election, and as he was about to ascend to the presidency, Tymoshenko and Yushchenko organized a massive protest, the "Orange Revolution", to protest Yanukovych's cheating in winning the election.
On October 31, 2004, under the leadership of Tymoshenko and Yushchenko, millions of people gathered in Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, in protest. During the protests, Tymoshenko's beautiful portrait of an orange slogan was printed in the hearts of countless Ukrainians.
After two months of struggle, the Ukrainian Electoral Commission was under pressure to re-run, and this time, Yushchenko ascended to the presidency with 52% approval, and Tymoshenko became the prime minister of Ukraine.
Everything is proceeding according to the plan of the "political couple" of Tymoshenko and Yushchenko, but the situation of "sharing hardships and hardships and not sharing wealth" also appears in the good partners.
After less than 8 months as prime minister, Yushchenko found an excuse to kick him out of power, and the "Yuji group" completely broke up.
Tymoshen, who was kicked out of office, did not give up, and after two years of hard work, she returned to the post of prime minister with deep pockets, and this time, the two remained at peace until the end of Yushchenko's term.
Prison prisoners
With Yushchenko arguably unsuccessful during his reign and knowing that he could not be re-elected, the 2011 presidential election became a contest between Tymoshenko and his old rival Yanukovych.
During Tymoshenko's second term as prime minister, she learned the lessons of the past and silently did something practical to lay the foundation for her future presidential race.
Under her leadership, Ukraine not only suffered less from the global financial crisis, but also moved the European football tournament to Ukraine, and a series of achievements have won the hearts and minds of many people.
Just when Tymoshenko thought she had won, an accident occurred, and it was Yanukovych who had been pulled down by her before, who ascended to the presidency, which meant that she was likely to be liquidated by the new president.
Sure enough, the enemy was extremely red-eyed, and after Yanukovych came to power, he immediately sent Tymoshenko to prison for "abuse of power", this time not just for more than a month, but was sentenced to 7 years.
Unfortunately, there was some luck in the fact that 7 years of prison life was not full, and in 2014, Yanukovych stepped down in a new round of color revolution and fled Ukraine, and Tymoshenko was released after 3 years in prison.
Flower of Steel
At this time, the situation in Ukraine was extremely chaotic, and a strong president was urgently needed to calm the dispute.
Tymoshenko, who made her debut in the "Orange Revolution," announced her return to politics, insisting that her allies push her wheelchair to the podium, as if the three years of imprisonment had not left her with the slightest shadow.
After her release from prison, Tymoshenko not only had the sympathy of domestic public opinion, but also the support of Western countries, and everyone thought that she was the new president of Ukraine.
However, fate once again played a joke on the woman, and in May 2014, the new president of Ukraine was elected by another oligarch, "candy king" Poroshenko.
Poroshenko is a staunch "Defector" faction, under whose leadership Ukraine has constantly friction with Russia, and as an oligarchic president, its own interests are far higher than the interests of the people.
After Poroshenko came to power, the situation in Ukraine did not improve at all, but became more and more chaotic, but in this case, his personal assets rose sharply, ranking third in the list of Ukraine's richest people.
In 2019, Poroshenko's term of office has expired, and a new round of presidential elections has begun again, on the one hand, Poroshenko, who is pursuing re-election, and Tymoshenko, the relentless political iron lady, and the presidential candidate seems to be competing between these two people.
Tymoshenko is full of confidence in himself, but the Ukrainian people have seen through the real face of the oligarchs, and in the face of the "candy king" and "gas princess", the Ukrainian people resolutely voted for the comedian Zelenskiy, hoping that this political amateur can bring new hope to Ukraine.
When the time is also, the fate is also, and Tymoshenko, who is vying for the presidency, once again leaves the scene.
Along the way, Tymoshenko's identity has undergone earth-shaking changes, from Cinderella to gas oligarchs, from beauty merchants to beauty politicians, and has been prime minister for two terms and has also been in prison twice.
As a woman, three shock presidential failures are not like a blow to her, more like an honor, not to mention that she has not given up so far, no matter what the future holds, Tymoshenko's life is not lonely!