Timoshenko passes sarcastic comments on flamboyant Rssn MP
By Vitaly Matarykin

ITAR-TASS News Agency
September 2, 2005 Friday

KIEV, September 2 — Circumstances have pressed Ukrainian Prime
Minister Julia Timoshenko to make comments on issues standing wide
apart from economy or politics.

Friday night, she made explanations to the media about her ethnic
background and aired a sarcastic note on a flamboyant Russian MP who
had initiated the filming of an erotic parody depicting her fictitious
intimacy with Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili.

Timoshenko said Transport Minister Yevgeny Chervonenko had released
untrue information about her ethnic roots in connection with the
beating of a student of the Jewish Theological University in Kiev at
the end of August.

Chervonenko accused her of insufficient attention to the incident,
saying she herself had an Armenian father and a Jewish mother.

“My mom was very astonished to hear it, because she’s a hundred percent
Ukrainian as far bask as her roots can be traced,” Timoshenko said.

Her late father descended from an ethnic Latvian family, she said
contrary to media reports that he maiden surname was Grigian, which
clearly suggests an affiliation with the Armenian people.

On the beating of the Jewish religious student, Timoshenko said all
the malefactors had been detained.

“I am well-disposed towards the Jews, I support all the Jewish
organizations and treat that nation very respectfully,” she said

She did not shun the question about the erotic movie, an idea of which
was authored by the Russian Liberal-Democratic MP Alexei Mitrofanov.

“I actually think the people who do such things can only have some
fantasies about sex but are good for nothing when it comes down to the
real thing, so let’s forgive them their trespasses,” Timoshenko said.