KIEV, Ukraine - Jailed former premier Yulia Tymoshenko will be allowed to leave prison to be treated for a back condition at a Ukrainian hospital, prosecutors said Monday as the government appeared to bow to Western pressure.
The 51-year-old opposition leader is serving a seven-year sentence after being convicted in October of abusing her office while negotiating a natural gas supply contract with Russia in 2009.
The case has strained Ukraine's ties with the West, which condemned it as politically motivated. Tymoshenko has accused President Viktor Yanukovych, her longtime rival, of jailing her to bar her from politics.
German doctors who examined her last month concluded that she suffers from intense pain and needs urgent treatment in a specialized clinic. Tymoshenko's family said she suffers from a herniated disc.
The Health Ministry said Tymoshenko will be treated at the Central Clinical Hospital in the eastern city of Kharkiv, where she is imprisoned.
The statement came days after the German government offered to treat Tymoshenko in Germany and said it was in talks with Ukrainian authorities on making that possible. The European Court of Human Rights asked the Ukrainian government last month to ensure Tymoshenko gets specialized medical treatment outside prison.
Tymoshenko's lawyer, Serhiy Vlasenko, reacted with skepticism, insisting that the clinic should be determined by the German doctors who diagnosed her and prescribed her treatment. He said that Tymoshenko will agree to be treated at a Ukrainian clinic only if that treatment is approved by the German doctors and is conducted by independent Ukrainian doctors.
"How can you trust a system that for half a year has been saying that she is healthy?" Vlasenko said. "What kind of clinic will they choose? It makes no sense."
But a spokesman for German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Steffen Seibert, said Berlin is "conducting talks with Ukraine's government with the aim of making medical treatment for Ms. Tymoshenko in Germany possible."
He said that during the talks, Ukraine "agreed to create the necessary legal basis for that."
Berlin's Charite hospital, where two of the doctors who examined Tymoshenko work, responded to reports that she may be moved to a Ukrainian hospital by saying it could not offer an assessment of the care that might be offered because it doesn't have information on conditions at the facility.
"The Charite stands by its offer to continue treating the patient," the hospital said in a brief statement.
Tymoshenko was convicted of abusing her powers during natural gas import negotiations with Russia in 2009. A contract she negotiated significantly increased the price Ukraine pays for Russian gas.
Tymoshenko says that agreeing to Russian terms was the only way to stop a gas war that had caused supply disruptions in Ukraine and across Europe after Russia cut gas flows to Ukraine and European consumers.
She charges that Yanukovych ordered her imprisonment to bar her from parliamentary elections this fall. Tymoshenko narrowly lost the presidential race to Yanukovych in 2010.
