Happy Birthday, Yulia!

Today is our Yulia’s birthday. We will come visit, bring her flowers and greetings. Although she probably won’t see or hear us. A couple days ago the prison administration moved her to a cell away from the street, deep in the prison. A piece of blue barred sky and the voices of free people are too precious a gift for the regime to allow.

But we know that she will feel our presence even through the thick prison walls, will hear our beating hearts over the clang of the prison bolts and shouting of the guards. In that dark and cramped cell she will know that we are close, that we are fighting for her freedom and Ukraine’s freedom. Because today these are identical concepts.

We know that it’s hard for her there, very hard, even if she won’t admit it to us. She is holding on and fighting her fight, a fight that will soon ignite the hearts of hundreds of thousands and will give a truly free and independent Ukraine the chance to say it’s Great Word.

A foreign journalist recently asked: could it happen that suddenly Yulia Tymoshenko will be freed and will let down her hands, lose the fill to fight? No, it won’t happen. Nobody will ever see Yulia Tymoshenko with her hands down. Because it’s impossible to break her. Nobody can beat this fragile and delicate woman, this iron woman!

Today they are torturing our Yulia, bullying her, dragging her under her arms to an alleged medical exam, covering her with shield so that people don’t see her. Today they are interrogating her right in the cell despite problems with her health and pain caused by her illness. Today they’re appearing on talk shows and telling different stories about her alleged crimes. They want to solidify their “victory” over Yulia.

But they don’t understand that they have already lost the fight, because abuse gives rise to new resistance, humiliation of human dignity strengthens the will to fight, and mockery of the truth leads directly to the victory of honest movements and people with pure intentions.

They won’t succeed. Because they are so afraid of her. They sense with some primitive instincts that truth is on her side. They know that sooner or later justice will prevail. And it won’t be their day.

Today they have fenced off the whole country, they’re putting up a Christmas tree on Maidan one and a half months before the New Year, they’re blocking streets so that people can’t come to Yulia on her birthday. But all these actions are futile. You can’t fence off freedom, you can’t dig the truth into a hole, you can’t destroy will.
Many of us think this dark day in our country will last a very long time. But that’s not so. It’s just that dusk is darkest before dawn. The sun is rising over the country much quicker than is seems to some.

The day will come when Yulia Tymoshenko will be free. Not because that’s what they’re saying in Brussels or Washington, not because someone is pressuring someone else. But because that is the code of our national history. Such is Ukraine’s Fate. And Yulia hasn’t yet said her word in the new history of Ukraine.

People ask us whether we believe that Yulia will return to politics and overcome this horde. We don’t believe – we know. It will happen!

We know that you will overcome everything, that you will survive because not just your destiny, but the density of all of Ukraine is in Your hands.

Happy Birthday, our dear Yulia!

Your team