Yulia Volodymyrivna Tymoshenko (, ; Hrihyan (); born 27 November 1960) is a Ukrainian politician, people's Deputy of Ukraine (1997–2000, 2002–2005, 2006–2007, 2007, 2014–2019, and since 2019), Vice Prime Minister of Ukraine for the fuel and energy complex (1999–2001), Prime Minister of Ukraine from February to September 2005 and from December 2007 to March 2010. She was the first and so far the only woman to serve as prime minister of Ukraine. She has the degree of Candidate of Economic Sciences. Tymoshenko is the leader of the Batkivshchyna () political party. She supports Ukraine's integration into the European Union and strongly opposes the membership of Ukraine in the Russia-led Eurasian Customs Union. She supports NATO membership for Ukraine. She co-led the Orange Revolution and was the first woman twice appointed and endorsed by parliamentary majority to become prime minister, serving from 24 January to 8 September 2005, and again from 18 December 2007 to 4 March 2010. She placed third in Forbes magazine's list of the world's most powerful women in 2005. Tymoshenko finished second in the 2010 Ukrainian presidential election runoff, losing by 3.5 percentage points to the winner, Viktor Yanukovych. From 5 August 2011 to 22 February 2014 she was involved in a criminal case that was seen by many as politically motivated persecution by President Viktor Yanukovych, but after the Revolution of Dignity she was rehabilitated by the Supreme Court of Ukraine and the European Court of Human Rights. In the concluding days of the Revolution of Dignity, she was released after three years in jail. She again finished second in the 2014 Ukrainian presidential election, this time to Petro Poroshenko. After being a heavy favorite in the polls for several years, she came third in the first round of the 2019 Ukrainian presidential election, receiving 13.40% of the vote, thus failing to qualify for the second round. Elected to the Verkhovna Rada (Ukraine's parliament) in 2019, she led her party in opposition. Early life and career Tymoshenko was born Yulia Hrihyan on 27 November 1960, in Dnipropetrovsk, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union. Her mother, Lyudmila Telehina (née Nelepova), was born on 11 August 1937, also in Dnipropetrovsk. Yulia's father, Volodymyr Hrihyan, who according to his Soviet Union passport was Latvian, was born on 3 December 1937, also in Dnipropetrovsk. He abandoned his wife and young daughter when Yulia was between one and three years old; Yulia used