Tymoshenko on hunger strike but is receiving medical treatment - doctor

Ukraine's former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko is undergoing medical treatment in its entirety despite a hunger strike announced on November 25, the chief physician of the clinic where Tymoshenko is being treated, told the press on Tuesday.

"Tymoshenko is undergoing medical treatment in its entirety and is receiving medication. But if the hunger strike continues, the application of medicines will be restricted," Mykhailo Afanasyev said.

He confirmed that Tymoshenko stopped receiving food on Monday.

"But she is taking in a sufficient amount of water. A clinic doctor said after examining her that her condition is satisfactory and stable," Afanasyev said.

The State Penitentiary Service said, meanwhile, that it cannot confirm whether Tymoshenko is going without food.

"We cannot document this in any way," chief of the Kachanivska Prison Ihor Kolpaschykov told reporters outside the clinic.

He confirmed that the prison administration had received Tymoshenko's statement saying she had gone on a hunger strike. In such instances, he said, the inmate is transferred to a separate ward, food is brought on schedule and prison personnel must register whether the inmate has or has not eaten the food, examining it before and after it arrives.

In our case, Tymoshenko shares the ward with a woman who is also undergoing medical treatment. We can not move her out of the ward. There are no video cameras in the ward, but there is a refrigerator, however banal this may sound," he said.

Prison personnel met with Tymoshenko in the morning in an attempt to talk her out of the hunger strike idea. She did not respond, Kolpaschykov said.