With her distinctive sleek braid and fiery oratory , Yulia Tymoshenko is back in the center stage of Ukraine politics . And it 's almost like she never left . Tymoshenko , 53 , was freed from prison Saturday after two-and-a-half years , most of them spent in a detention hospital . Dressed in black , she later emerged at Kiev 's Independence Square in a wheel chair . Cheers erupted . Tearfully , she hailed the sea of protesters , who listened and occasionally waved . `` Today , Ukraine has finished with this terrible dictator , '' she said , referring to ousted President Viktor Yanukovych . She then passed on a not-so-subtle message . `` There 'll be no Ukraine but the Ukraine you want , '' she said . `` And I 'm the guarantor of that Ukraine . '' The polarizing former Prime Minister has a complicated relationship with Yanukovych , who fled the capital Saturday after days of bloody protests that killed dozens . Both have dominated the nation 's politics for years . Both have a rivalry that dates years . READ MORE : Who 's in charge of Ukraine ? Rise and fall . Tymoshenko was born in 1960 in Dnipropetrovsk . Before she joined politics , she worked in the gas industry , including a stint as president of an energy company in the 1990s . Her international popularity soared a decade ago as a result of her ardent speeches that helped overturn Yanukovych 's presidential win in 2004 . She 's considered a hero of the country 's 2004 Orange Revolution , a wave of peaceful protests that swept her and Viktor Yushchenko into power as Prime Minister and President , respectively . Track how the crisis unfolded in Ukraine . The same revolution successfully overturned what many believed was a largely false presidential win by Yanukovych . But the promise of the revolution soon turned sour . The two feuded publicly , prompting Yushchenko to fire her a few months into her term . In 2007 , Tymoshenko was back as Prime Minister . But she was dogged by accusations of irregularities and overlooking the nation 's economic problems . Her tense working relation with Yushchenko did not help their case . Analysts say it was one of the reasons she lost to Yanukovych in the 2010 presidential elections . Who 's who in Ukraine unrest . Forced out . After Yanukovych won that election , Tymoshenko , was forced out of office and into the courtroom . In 2011 , she was on trial over a costly natural gas agreement that she signed with Russia while she was Prime Minister . In October of that year , a Ukrainian court found her guilty of abuse of authority for signing overpriced gas contracts with Russia and sentenced her to seven years in prison . The prosecutor said the gas deals inflicted damage to the country amounting to more than 1.5 billion hryvnias ( almost $ 190 million at the exchange rate at the time ) . In addition to the sentence , the court ruled she must repay the money . Amnesty International slammed the verdict as `` politically motivated '' and called for the release of Tymoshenko , who was Prime Minister from January to September 2005 , and December 2007 to March 2010 . The case against her was widely considered politically motivated , and the United States and other Western nations called her `` a political prisoner . '' Hunger strike . Her activism work continued while she was behind bars . Two years ago , she went on a hunger strike to draw attention to `` violence and lack of rights '' after she was allegedly beaten unconscious by guards . She ended her hunger strike after three weeks and agreed to receive medical treatment . Tymoshenko was freed Saturday after parliament ordered charges against her dropped . She went from her hospital bed , and into the twists and turns of Ukrainian politics . 20 questions : What 's behind Ukraine 's political crisis ?
`` I 'm the guarantor of that Ukraine , '' she tells a crowd . She has had a complicated relationship with Yanukovych . He was elected president in 2010 but he's been accused by protesters and Western leaders of being corrupt and authoritarian.