KIEV, May 9 (Itar-Tass) —— Ukraine's former prime minister Yulia Timoshenko, who is serving a seven-year jail term in a general prison in the northeast city of Kharkov, has stopped a hunger strike, a German physician supervising her course of medical treatment said Wednesday.
Timoshenko is currently kept at the Kharkov hospital of Ukrainian Railways where she was taken for treatment earlier.
The medical supervisor, Dr Lutz Harms from Charite hospital in Berlin told reporters he had examined Timoshenko earlier in the day and had drawn up a plan of treatment. Her withdrawal from the hunger strike would be gradual, he said.
In the first phase, Timoshenko will start with taking water and natural juices and solid foods will be added to them somewhat later, Harms said.
As for the course of treatment proper, physiotherapy and medical procedures will be administered to Timoshenko in the next few days and pharmaceutical treatment will be added afterwards.
Harms made a comment on Timoshenko’s current health status, saying it does not differ much from what she had in prison.
According to his assessment, the course of treatment at the railway hospital will likely take more than a month and may be as long as eight weeks.
Timoshenko, who is serving a jail term for what the Ukrainian judiciary qualified as an abuse of occupational powers in the process of signing natural gas agreements in Russia in 2009, called a hunger strike April 20 in connection with physical brutality she was subjected to during a forcible transportation to hospital.
Tuesday, Timoshenko’s daughter Eugenia said her mother had lost about ten kilograms.
Timoshenko’s lawyer Sergei Vlasenko said the former Prime Minister had a weight of 59 kilograms before the hunger strike.