Yulia Tymoshenko, the former Ukrainian prime minister, has denounced as a “lynching” and a “show” the trial that could see her jailed as early as Friday.
Making her closing statement on Thursday with hundreds of her supporters outside the Kiev courtroom, she accused Viktor Yanukovich, Ukraine’s president, of orchestrating the case to crush someone he saw as a “dangerous political rival”.
“This has been a classic lynching trial,” said the 50-year-old political firebrand, seemingly energised despite already spending 57 days in detention on contempt of court charges.
“You should have already brought in an acquittal and ended this humiliation of Ukraine. But the show goes on,” she told the judge.
In an unexpected twist, the verdict could now come during a summit of European Union leaders and former Soviet republics in Warsaw on Friday meant to celebrate Kiev’s progress towards a crucial political and trade deal with the EU.
EU leaders have warned that a guilty verdict and jail term for Ukraine’s leading opposition politician could be a major setback for hopes professed by Mr Yanukovich’s administration for closer integration with Europe.
Ms Tymoshenko faces up to 10 years in prison if found guilty of exceeding her authority when brokering a 2009 natural gas agreement with Russia while prime minister.
Prosecutors say the deal damaged Ukraine’s economy and have called for a seven-year sentence.
“Today I understand well what it felt like to be crushed during the Soviet regime, thrown into Soviet jails without proper courts and due process,” she told the courtroom as she read from a 60-page statement.
Mr Yanukovich, who narrowly beat his arch-rival in elections last year, has come under intensifying pressure from EU states and the US in recent weeks to drop the case, widely seen in Ukraine and beyond as politically motivated.
He has denied being behind the case, saying it was instigated by his predecessor and Ms Tymoshenko’s one-time Orange Revolution ally, Viktor Yushchenko.
Stefan Füle, EU enlargement commissioner, told a conference in Warsaw on Thursday that talks would continue aimed at concluding a political “association” and wide-ranging free trade deal with Kiev by the end of the year.
But he said a guilty court verdict could jeopardise chances of winning the necessary ratification by the EU’s 27 states and the European parliament.
“There is no doubt that if the former prime minister was put in prison, the relationship between Ukraine and the EU should not be the same,” he warned.
As well as bringing rival camps of pro- and anti-Tymoshenko demonstrators to Khreshchatyk, Kiev’s main street, the case is being closely watched in neighbouring countries. It featured prominently on Thursday in newspapers in Poland, which is keen to see its eastern neighbour more closely integrated with the EU and wrested out of Moscow’s orbit.
Civic groups in Ukraine warn the Tymoshenko case is symbolic of a broader rollback of democratic gains achieved after the Orange Revolution.
But they urged the EU to continue talks with Kiev as the best way of securing future reforms and avoiding the country again falling under Russian influence.
Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin – now almost certain to return as president next year – has repeatedly tried to pull Ukraine into a customs union he has formed with other ex-Soviet republics.
Mr Yanukovich had hinted in recent weeks that Kiev might seek a face-saving exit from the Tymoshenko trial by “decriminalising” the article under which she was charged.
But motions to do so now seem unlikely to pass through parliament in time, although the judge could still adjourn the case.
Ms Tymoshenko warned she would “under no circumstances” seek amnesty from Mr Yanukovich if the law changed after her trial ended. Doing so would be “recognition of a dictatorship”, she said.
Jose Manuel Pinto Teixeira, head of the EU delegation to Ukraine talks, warned this week: “It seems our messages were not heard well by the Ukrainian side.”
Bernd Pulch 