The Czech Republic has granted asylum to the husband of jailed Ukrainian former premier and opposition leaderYulia Tymoshenko, the Czech interior minister confirmed Friday. Alexander Tymoshenko had handed in his application months ago, Jan Kubice said, according to the Czech news agency CTK. Yulia Tymoshenko's party had announced her husband's plans in Kiev earlier Friday, saying the 51-year-old businessman was trying to prevent the Ukrainian government from "exerting further pressure" on his wife. Yulia Tymoshenko was found guilty of abuse of office in Octoberand sentenced to seven years imprisonment. She says she is the victim of a vendetta pursued by President Viktor Yanukovych, who defeated her in the presidential run-off in February 2010. Czech Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg appeared to accept that the granting of asylum would likely worsen already tense relations between the two countries. "Some regimes react like that," he told a Prague radio station. Ukraine's former economics minister, Bogdan Danilishin, was also granted asylum by Prague in early 2011 even though Kiev had issued a warrant for his arrest on embezzlement charges. Kiev reacted by expelling two Czech diplomats, accusing them of spying. Yulia Tymoshenko is serving her sentence at a woman's prison in the district of Kharkiv, 450 kilometres east of the capital Kiev. After visiting her on Friday, her daughter Yevhenia Carr renewed her protest against what she called "undignified prison conditions. " The prison authorities rejected her complaint, saying the 51-year-old's cell met "European standards. " Tymoshenko was found guilty of ordering government officials to sign a natural gas import contract with Russia in 2009 in breach of her authority, in a trial which drew international condemnation for being politically motivated.
