Yulia Tymoshenko

Yulia's paternal grandfather, Abram Kapitelman (Абрам Кельманович Капітельман), was born in 1914.

Her mother, Lyudmila Telehina (née Nelepova), was born on 11 August 1937, also in Dnipropetrovsk.

Yulia's father, Volodymyr Hrihyan, who according to his Soviet Union passport was Latvian, was born on 3 December 1937, also in Dnipropetrovsk.

He abandoned his wife and young daughter when Yulia was between one and three years old; Yulia used her mother's surname.

After graduating from Dnipropetrovsk State University in 1940, Kapitelman was sent to work in Western Ukraine, where he worked "one academic quarter" as the director of a public Jewish school in the city Sniatyn.

Kapitelman was mobilized into the army in the autumn of 1940 and subsequently was killed while taking part in the Great Patriotic War (1941–1945) on 8 November 1944, with the rank of "lieutenant" in Signal corps.

Yulia Volodymyrivna Tymoshenko (Юлія Володимирівна Тимошенко, ; Hrihyan (Грігян); born 27 November 1960) is a Ukrainian politician, who served as Prime Minister of Ukraine in 2005, and again from 2007 until 2010; the first and only woman in Ukraine to hold that position.

Tymoshenko was born Yulia Hrihyan on 27 November 1960, in Dnipropetrovsk, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union.

In 1977, Tymoshenko graduated from high school No. 75 in Dnipropetrovsk.

Tymoshenko constantly helps the school.

In 1978, Tymoshenko was enrolled in the Automatization and Telemechanics Department of the Dnipropetrovsk Mining Institute.

In 1979, she transferred to the Economics Department of the Dnipropetrovsk State University, majoring in cybernetic engineering and graduating in 1984 with first degree honors as an engineer-economist.

After graduating from the Dnipropetrovsk State University in 1984, Tymoshenko worked as an engineer-economist in the "Dnipro Machine-Building Plant" (which produced missiles) in Dnipropetrovsk until 1988.

In 1988, as part of the perestroika initiatives, Yulia and Oleksandr Tymoshenko borrowed 5,000 roubles and opened a video-rental cooperative, perhaps with the help of Oleksander's father, Gennadi Tymoshenko, who presided over a regional film-distribution network in the provincial council.

From 1989 to 1991, Yulia and Oleksandr Tymoshenko founded and led a commercial video-rental company "Terminal" in Dnipropetrovsk,

In 1991, Tymoshenko established (jointly with her husband Oleksandr, Gennadi Tymoshenko, and Olexandr Gravets) "The Ukrainian Petrol Corporation", a company that supplied the agriculture industry of Dnipropetrovsk with fuel from 1991 to 1995.

Tymoshenko worked as a general director.

In 1995, this company was reorganized into United Energy Systems of Ukraine.

She has been a member of the Verkhovna Rada as People's Deputy of Ukraine several times between 1997 and 2007, and presently as of 2014, and was First Deputy Prime Minister of Ukraine for the fuel and energy complex from 1999 to 2001.

She has the degree of Candidate of Economic Sciences.

Tymoshenko is the leader of the Batkivshchyna (Батьківщина) political party.

She supports Ukraine's integration into the European Union and strongly opposes the membership of Ukraine in the Russia-led Eurasian Customs Union.

She supports NATO membership for Ukraine.

Tymoshenko served as the president of United Energy Systems of Ukraine, a privately owned middleman company that became the main importer of Russian natural gas to Ukraine, from 1995 to 1 January 1997.

During that time she was nicknamed the "gas princess".

In 1999, she defended her PhD dissertation, titled State Regulation of the tax system, at the Kyiv National Economic University and received a Ph.D. in economics.

Tymoshenko has worked as a practicing economist and academic.

Prior to her political career, she became a successful but controversial businesswoman in the gas industry, becoming by some estimates one of the richest people in the country.

She was also accused of "having given Pavlo Lazarenko kickbacks in exchange for her company's stranglehold on the country's gas supplies", although Judge Martin Jenkins of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, on 7 May 2004, dismissed the allegations of money laundering and conspiracy regarding UESU, Somoli Ent.

et al. (companies affiliated with Yulia Tymoshenko) in connection with Lazarenko's activities.

She co-led the Orange Revolution and was the first woman twice appointed and endorsed by parliamentary majority to become prime minister, serving from 24 January to 8 September 2005, and again from 18 December 2007 to 4 March 2010.

She placed third in Forbes magazine's list of the world's most powerful women in 2005.

Before becoming Ukraine's first female prime minister in 2005, Tymoshenko co-led the Orange Revolution.

She was placed third in Forbes magazine's List of The World's 100 Most Powerful Women 2005.

Tymoshenko finished second in the 2010 Ukrainian presidential election runoff, losing by 3.5 percentage points to the winner, Viktor Yanukovych.

From 2011 to 2014 she was detained due to a criminal case that was seen by many as politically motivated persecution by President Viktor Yanukovych, but after the Revolution of Dignity she was rehabilitated by the Supreme Court of Ukraine and the European Court of Human Rights.

In the concluding days of the Revolution of Dignity, she was released after three years in jail.

She again finished second in the 2014 Ukrainian presidential election, this time to Petro Poroshenko.

After being a heavy favorite in the polls for several years, she came third in the first round of the 2019 Ukrainian presidential election, receiving 13.40% of the vote, thus failing to qualify for the second round.

Elected to the Verkhovna Rada (Ukraine's parliament) in 2019, she led her party in opposition.