UKRAINE’S new prime minister, Yulia Timoshenko, has begun a battle to clear her fugitive husband of corruption allegations and punish his accusers’ allies in the regime ousted in Kiev’s Orange Revolution.

She has protested to the Supreme Court about a criminal case brought by allies of the former president, Leonid Kuchma, against Alexander Timoshenko, her husband, who is now in hiding abroad.

The action is the first shot in what is likely to be a passionate campaign by the fiery politician against Kuchma and his cronies to avenge their attempts to have her, her husband and her father-in-law imprisoned on charges of embezzlement.

“My husband is living in an undisclosed location abroad,” said Timoshenko, Ukraine’s richest woman, whose nomination as premier by the newly elected President Viktor Yushchenko is expected to be endorsed by parliament this week. “I would not risk plunging him into a new ‘meat grinder’ until the court fully acquits our family.”

Timoshenko, 44, has been trying to quash the allegations since she fell out with Kuchma, who sacked her as deputy prime minister in charge of energy in 2001. Enemies in the Kuchma camp accused the Timoshenkos of siphoning off state funds from lucrative gas imports when the couple headed United Energy Systems, a private firm that had a monopoly on gas imports from former Soviet countries, including Russia.

Timoshenko’s wealth is alleged to have come from these contracts, earning her the nickname “Gas Princess”.

She was briefly held by the authorities but the Timoshenkos, whose daughter Yevgenia, 19, is studying in Britain, have always rejected the allegations as politically motivated.

In a separate case Russia, which supported Yushchenko’s opponent in last year’s presidential elections, accused Timoshenko of bribing Russian military officers. She denied any wrongdoing and refused to go to Moscow for questioning. “I have a formally registered hunting gun and shall open fire on anyone who may try to come anywhere near,” she said.

Timoshenko, who was born into a poor family, became the populist face of the Orange Revolution — named after the opposition’s campaign colour — after joining forces with Yushchenko. She helped bring hundreds of thousands of supporters on to the streets of Kiev after a first presidential election was rigged. Kuchma’s candidate, Viktor Yanukovich, was defeated in the election rerun.

Unlike the more moderate Yushchenko, who was poisoned and disfigured during the election campaign, Timoshenko has in the past called for Kuchma and some of his allies to be jailed.

She has accused him of corruption and called for his prosecution in connection with the death of Georgy Gongadze, a journalist whose decapitated body was found in woods outside Kiev in 2000 after he tried to investigate corruption allegations surrounding Kuchma.

Timoshenko has also called for a series of privatisation deals from the Kuchma era to be investigated. At the top of her list is Kryvorizhstal, the country’s largest state steel plant, which last year was sold to a consortium backed by Viktor Pinchuk, Kuchma’s son-in-law, and Rinat Akhmetov, Ukraine’s richest man, who was close to the former regime.

Their bid of $811m was successful even though it was lower than other bids. The highest came from a US and British consortium which offered $1.5 billion and promised to invest $1.2 billion in the plant.

“Prison was pretty hard for her,” said one of Timoshenko’s allies. “She started dreaming of revenge against those responsible for her ending up in a cell. She is now afraid of nothing.”

Additional reporting: Elena Reznikova, Kiev

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