KIEV, Ukraine, Dec. 23 (UPI) -- Ukrainian opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko said authorities are restricting the number of times she can speak in public following fraud charges.
Tymoshenko was charged with what she said was making the unilateral decision to use funds from the sale of quotas from greenhouse gases to cover expenses incurred through the payment of pensions when she served as prime minister from December 2007 to March 2010.
She said from Kiev that the prosecutor general's office had reduced the number of addresses she can make on a single day. Prosecutors, she complained, also vowed to question her every day, the Interfax news agency in Ukraine reports.
She said "dozens of people" were tasked by authorities to investigate the "far-fetched" claims that she misdirected federal funds. She denies the charges and blames her rival President Viktor Yanukovych for directing a culture of "political repression."
"Their economic policy is a mess, their social policy is a mess, there are no reforms being carried out, corruption is reaching new heights, and so they have to get rid of their opponents with the help of their prosecutor's office and courts," she said in statements posted on her Web site.
Several lawmakers in Kiev were injured when a brawl broke out during a parliamentary session on Tymoshenko's charges last week.
