UKRAINE’s former prime minister, Yulia Tymoshenko, flew into London last week to meet Baroness Thatcher, vowing to drag her country kicking and screaming away from the Russian bear and into the European fold if she returns to office after elections next weekend.

“Real women don’t do U-turns,” she said after the meeting, referring to Thatcher’s famous declaration that “the lady’s not for turning”.

Tymoshenko curled into the back seat of a car, dressed in a sleek cream wool shift matched with 4in high heels. “I think I can be an iron lady and inside still a human,” she said. “It’s about the ability to preserve the human touch.”

Bloc Yulia Tymoshenko, her party, is tipped to do well in the elections and she is the favour-ite to be the next prime minister. With her trademark braid curled around her head, hers is one of the two faces of the orange revolution, a striking contrast to that of Viktor Yush-chenko, the president, who was disfigured by an attempt to poison him with dioxin, an act he blames on the Russians.

She admits the braid is a “pin on”. “I found the style simple,” she said. “It saves time, and it’s very traditional.”

Tymoshenko is pro-western and pro-free market, hence the meeting with Thatcher, who was so taken with her that she told her she would have liked to campaign on her behalf.

A billionairess who made her fortune in the free-for-all chaos of the mid1990s in Ukraine’s gas business, she is brimming with confidence that her party will win at the polls.

Tymoshenko, 46, was supposedly betrayed by Yush-chenko when he went back on a deal that saw her agree not to run for president if she could serve as prime minister. He dismissed her after seven months.

He then suffered the ignominy of being forced to replace her with a candidate approved by his arch-rival, the pro-Rus-sian Viktor Yanukovych.

Tymoshenko is passionate in her convictions and has no fear of Ukraine’s macho political style. “Women are stronger. Like Thatcher, I’m committed to changing my country for the better,” she said. She was delighted with a gift of Thatcher’s memoirs, inscribed “To Julia, Fighter for Freedom”.

Her mission is “first, to preserve our hard-won independence and to get rid of postSoviet bureaucracy”. She promised to fight corruption, the single most difficult issue and one that polls show is people’s biggest concern. Even Moscow does not scare her. “If the independence of the Ukraine is at stake, then I will call people on to the streets.”

It will be a tough fight. In parliamentary elections last year the single largest share of the vote went to the Party of the Regions, led by Yanukovych.

Tymoshenko flew back in a private jet to campaign in these very regions where Ukraine’s 17% ethnic Russian minority, many of whom pine for closer ties with Moscow, are concentrated. A heady mix of beauty and brains, a whirlwind of energy, like Thatcher she may change her country for ever.

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