Yulia Tymoshenko

Excerpt from:

Ukrainian premier says she is not Jewish

Inter TV, Kiev
2 Sep 05

[Correspondent] Not a single news conference goes without personal questions. Today the prime minister revealed the secrets of her ethnic background. It turns out that her mother is Ukrainian, and her father is, contrary to popular opinion, not Armenian but Latvian.

Tymoshenko said she does not have any Jewish ancestry, as the transport minister [Yevhen Chervonenko] recently suggested, but respects representatives of this nationality.

[Correspondent] That they made my father an Armenian and gave my mother another nationality, I think Yevhen Alfredovych [Chervonenko] was trying to feel solidarity with me this way. [Audience, Tymoshenko laughing]. But I would like to say that in any case I am together with him in the fight against any instances of anti-Semitism in our country. There is no need to look for additional questionable evidence.