Kiev Chameleon

KIEV--Like many Ukrainian politicians, prime minister and presidential candidate Yulia Tymoshenko relies on fortune-tellers and TV psychics to bolster her embattled spirit. Several years ago, one such mystical specialist compared birth years, personality types, and other intimate details to confirm what Tymoshenko had suspected since the 1996 release of the movie Evita.

“She was told she is the reincarnation of Eva Perón,” says Dmitry Vydrin, who was Tymoshenko’s close adviser for nearly a decade. “And she believes it. She admits it in closed circles. She copies her consciously and subconsciously.” There's the elaborate, kaleidoscopic wardrobe; the bleached up-do; the theatrical mannerisms; the way the public rustles whenever she appears. “It's that way of flirting with the public, of addressing them as ‘my loved ones,'” Vydrin says. And there are the men whom the two women used to get out of poverty, but then brightly eclipsed. For Evita, it was her husband, Argentine President Juan Perón; for Tymoshenko, it was a string of well-connected men, starting with her father-in-law and ending with Ukraine's current president and hero of the 2004 Orange Revolution, Viktor Yushchenko.

But, while Evita never held office, Tymoshenko is within striking distance of her country's presidency. She may be polling behind front-runner Viktor Yanukovich (who lost in 2004), but observers say she is likely to gain many of the votes scattered among 16 other candidates who will fall away after the first round of voting on January 17. She'll then face the wooden, gaffe-prone Yanukovich, who twice did jail time for assault and theft, and many observers think she can take him.

But, if she wins, what can Ukraine--and the world--expect from this Soviet-bloc Evita? With Ukraine teetering on the geopolitical fulcrum between Russia and the West, it's no small question: If Tymoshenko wins, her party will control all three branches of government. Gas negotiations with Moscow? Tymoshenko will decide. NATO ascension? Ditto, that.

Tymoshenko’s authoritarian proclivities are well-known--and feared--among the country's elite, and they’ve earned her comparisons to another political leader: Vladimir Putin. Many observers say it's chilling to consider what her leadership could mean for the green shoots of Ukrainian democracy. “I am really very scared,” Vydrin told me. (Once her image-maker and close friend, Vydrin was forced out of Tymoshenko’s political party in 2006. He is now Yushchenko’s deputy security minister, but his wife is still friends with Tymoshenko.) “You can’t stop her in any normal political way. You can’t beat her on TV, you can’t out-argue her on the town square. If she had more biological time on earth, she’d become president of the Ukraine, president of the EU, president of the U.S. The only thing that can stop her is Tymoshenko herself.”

Kicking off her campaign this fall,Tymoshenko made sure, as always, to invoke her impoverished roots. “When I was starting out, there were seven of us living in one apartment,” she said. “We dreamed of getting on our feet and getting our first apartment--our first personal square meters.” She then assured the crowd that she could lead Ukraine through the current economic crisis. “I know quite well what it means to live without water, gas, or heat. And that’s why I will put an end to this.”

The story of a poor childhood is a stumping staple for Tymoshenko, whose fortune of several hundred million dollars is said to be squirreled away in British offshore accounts and gold bullion, and whose mansion is protected by an army of personal bodyguards. Yet, like Eva Perón, who is said to have forged her birth certificate, Tymoshenko is also deeply ashamed of the parts of her past that she cannot sublimate into myth.

She was born in 1960, in Ukraine’s industrial heartland, and lived in a broken home. Her father left when Tymoshenko was very young, and she was raised by her mother. (She denies persistent rumors that she is an Armenian Jew.) Seeking a way up and out, she joined the Komsomol, the youth wing of the Communist Party. Around this time, she met her future husband, Oleksandr, the son of a regional party boss. They married in 1979 and soon had their only child, Yevgenia. Though their marriage hasn't been a happy one--they haven't lived together for more than ten years and never appear together in public--Oleksandr’s connections proved useful: His father helped the couple start a business and, later, facilitated Tymoshenko’s leap to lead a local gasoline monopoly.

Soon, however, Tymoshenko met a man with still more connections: regional political kingpin Pavlo Lazarenko, an ally of Leonid Kuchma, the newly elected--and notoriously corrupt--second president of Ukraine. Tymoshenko followed Lazarenko to Kiev as he began his political ascent. When he became prime minister in 1996, Lazarenko helped his disciple form United Energy Systems of Ukraine (UES), a gas-trading company that was, essentially, a lucrative money-laundering operation. According to 1999 court documents, Lazarenko gave Tymoshenko special concessions that allowed her to consolidate one-third of Ukraine's gas sector--and about one-fifth of its GDP. The operation earned Tymoshenko the nickname “Gas Princess."

Tymoshenko soon entered politics, winning a 1996 parliamentary election in a landslide. But, when Kuchma fired Lazarenko, she joined her old friend in the opposition--and Kuchma took his revenge. He had UES kicked out of the gas sector and, in 2001, Tymoshenko was arrested for illegally transferring $1 billion out of Ukraine and paying millions in bribes to Lazarenko. She was placed in solitary confinement for a month. “That arrest had a big effect on her,” says a source who helped Tymoshenko at the time. (The charges were later dropped.) “From that moment, absolute power became absolute protection in her mind."