MOSCOW, January 15. /TASS/. Ukraine’s former Prime Minister and Batkovshchina party leader Yulia Timoshenko, who is facing corruption charges, said that the country is effectively governed from abroad.

Addressing the Verkhovna Rada (Ukraine’s parliament), Timoshenko said her party would oppose legislation that undermines the country’s sovereignty. "We will not allow, at any cost, the passage of a single bill in this parliament that destroys the country’s sovereignty. Governance of Ukraine from outside will be brought to an end once and for all," she said.

On the night of January 14, two Ukrainian anti-corruption agencies conducted searches at the Batkovshchina party’s office in Kiev as part of the Rada bribery case. Charges of bribing parliamentarians were brought against party leader Timoshenko. The recordings released by Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) reveal Timoshenko offering MPs $10,000 per month for specific parliamentary votes.

Ukrainian media have repeatedly reported that the activities of the NABU and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO) are overseen by the US. According to Vasily Prozorov, a former officer of the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU), NABU is a US-backed project, and its investigators were trained by the FBI.