Yulia Tymoshenko announced the beginning of a "new era" in Ukraine with the cheers of her followers. Because the former Prime Minister announced her candidacy in the presidential election at the end of March. In recent polls, the 58-year-old is in front of acting head of state Petro Poroshenko, who has not officially announced his candidacy.
In her homeland she is highly controversial. Tymoshenko became known as the acclaimed figurehead of the so-called Orange Revolution in 2004, at the top of which she stood together with the future president Viktor Yushchenko. This led to the cancellation of the election victory of their nemesis Viktor Yanukovych in the presidential election. The new head of state, Yushchenko, made her Prime Minister in 2005 - but the situation quickly broke up.
Tymoshenko left the government, but returned in 2007 as Prime Minister and remained in office until 2010. Shortly thereafter, she was defeated in the presidential election Yanukovych. Under his mandate, she was arrested and sentenced to seven years in prison for malfeasance in 2011 in connection with a controversial gas deal with Russia.
In February 2014, she was released in the wake of the revolution in Ukraine and later treated for a back problem in Berlin. In the same year she triggered criticism in Germany, after excerpts from a recorded telephone conversation had been published. In it, Tymoshenko had apparently said with reference to the Russian leader Vladimir Putin and the integration of the Ukrainian Black Sea peninsula Crimea in the Russian Federation, she was "ready to take a submachine gun and shoot this bastard a bullet in the head."
Before Tymoshenko on Monday already the actor Volodymyr Selensky had submitted his candidacy for the presidency.