EDITORIAL

Most reaction to the jailing of Ukrainian opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko has focused on its effect on Ukraine’s relations with the European Union and Russia, and concerns about political repression by President Viktor Yanukovych’s government.

But most of the media, in personalizing the issue around the charismatic figure of Tymoshenko, has missed a key motivation behind the seven-year sentence: Fear. Yanukovych and his billionaire backers are petrified of a social explosion as his tough austerity program, ordered by the IMF, begins to bite.

The warning signs are on the wall: Ukraine’s economy never really recovered from the 15 percent drop in GDP in 2009, and now industrial exports are in trouble as the EU teeters on the brink of a new recession. And the Russian gas Ukraine needs to keep its industry afloat is in jeopardy after the opening of the Nord Stream pipeline.

Ukraine’s foreign currency and gold reserves fell 8 percent in September to just $35 billion, and the IMF is demanding deeper cuts in social spending before it will disburse more loans.

Yanukovych’s hiking of household gas prices by 50 percent and the plan to raise the retirement age for women from 55 to 60 years have angered millions of ordinary Ukrainians. And last month thousands of Afghan war and Chernobyl veterans stormed parliament over plans to slash their social benefits.

The possibility of huge, Orange Revolution-style protests ahead of parliamentary elections next year may have prompted Yanukovych to get Tymoshenko out of the way. Certainly he remembers the effect she had in leading that movement, and fears something far bigger if Europe’s debt tsunami hits Ukraine.

Jailing Tymoshenko is a dangerous in other ways, however. It risks burnishing her golden halo, which was looking fairly tarnished after her corruption-tainted years in power. It cannot be ruled out that Yanukovych, under pressure from the EU and fearing reliance on Moscow, will do a U-turn and release Tymoshenko early.

But it will not stem the wave of protests that is surely coming. And what really worries Yanukovych is that they could make the tent protests of 2004 seem like a shashlik party in the park.