that she watched the Tunisian Revolution and Egyptian Revolution of 2011 "with joy and admiration". On 23 August 2020, Tymoshenko tested positive for COVID-19 and was hospitalized in serious condition, with one of her spokespeople saying that "her condition is assessed as serious, her temperature is up to 39 (Celsius)." On 25 August, Tymoshenko was moved to the intensive care unit after her health worsened and prompted a transfer, a spokeswoman said, adding that she remains in "serious condition." On 2 September, Tymoshenko announced through her Facebook account that "Finally today, my crisis condition is behind. And although recovery is still a distant prospect, now there is an opportunity to return to normal life, step by step," adding "that fighting off a serious disease for almost two weeks alters the perception of reality". On 11 September Tymoshenko's press secretary Maryna Soroka announced that Tymoshenko had tested negative for COVID-19. Cultural and political image Tymoshenko is a voluble public performer. Her fiery rhetoric made her an icon of the Orange Revolution. Tymoshenko's critics have suggested that, as an oligarch, she gained her fortune improperly. Her former business partner, former Ukrainian prime minister Pavlo Lazarenko, was convicted in the United States on charges of money laundering, corruption and fraud, the magnitude of which was in the billions of dollars. However, on 7 May 2004, Judge Martin Jenkins of the US District Court for the Northern District of California dismissed the allegations of Tymoshenko's involvement in Lazarenko's murky business. Her transition from oligarch to reformer was believed by many voters to be both genuine and effective. Discrepancies between her declared income and her luxurious designer outfits, have been pointed out in the Ukrainian tabloids. When Tymoshenko joined the Yushchenko government, she did not speak Ukrainian. According to fellow Ukrainian politician Borys Tarasyuk, in 2002 Tymoshenko "only spoke Russian even when I spoke to her in Ukrainian", but since then she has made the transition to speaking only Ukrainian. During her second stint as prime-minister her ratings in opinion polls fell. In early 2008, in opinion polls for the 2009 Ukrainian presidential election, she stood at 30% but by late April 2009 that had shrunk to 15% According to a poll carried out between 29 January and 5 February 2009 by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, just over 43% of the Ukrainian voters believed Tymoshenko should leave her post, whereas just over 45%