The personal masseur of Ukraine’s former premier Yulia Tymoshenko visited her in jail Tuesday after supporters of the opposition leader complained she was confined to bed with back pain.
Ukraine’s prisons service said that the masseur arrived at the Kachavinska penal colony in the eastern Kharkiv region with the special massage table that Tymoshenko had demanded for the procedure.
“Yulia Volodymyrovna’s personal masseur arrived this morning,” the prison’s spokesman Yuriy Chumak told reporters. “She brought her personal massage table. The procedure will last several hours.”
He added a special commission from the Ukrainian health ministry was also at the prison and they would examine Tymoshenko after her massage.
Her supporters say Tymoshenko has been left bed-ridden by untreated back pain. In the latest health alarm, they said she fainted earlier this month after taking medication prescribed to her by prison doctors.
Ukraine’s prisons service had earlier claimed that Tymoshenko had rejected their offer of a massage as the “table offered by the prison did not suit her and she wanted a professional table.”
Tymoshenko was transferred to the Kharkiv jail on December 30 to serve out her seven-year sentence for abuse of power, after a Kiev court rejected her appeal against the conviction.
Ukraine’s Tymoshenko gets massage in jail
