Noviy Kanal had Yulia Tymoshenko as their guest tonight: she's an awesome politician - full of dignity, full of class, soft yet has some very deadly poison hidden underneath, very convincing when she speaks, prepared wonderfully to any kinds of questions, be it about the opposition's plans, her own finances or her alleged radicalism.

She's beautiful, too, but her looks are as much of an asset as they are not.

Last week, I met an elderly woman, sort of ugly, who voted for Yanukovych and stood waving a blue flag near his campaign headquarters: when asked why Yanukovych, not Yushchenko, she couldn't stop describing what a monster Yulia Tymoshenko was. She may have been ridiculous, but she's far from being the only one like this: someone told me a while ago that the purpose of the stupid braids that Tymoshenko began wearing at some point was to make her look not so youngish, to make her resemble the older, more conservative generation of women just a tiny little bit more. (Tonight, she had her hair loose - and wasn't wearing anything orange.)

Then there are those male politicians who have many reasons to fear Tymoshenko - and they tend to use her good looks against her, too: Moroz, yesterday, spoke about her only in terms of her appearance; Shufrych, a deputy and one of the closest allies of Yanukovych, said he'd like to see her where every good-looking woman belongs - in the kitchen, with kids. Again, this may sound cheap and tacky to some, but there are many who consider this kind of attitude appealing. (Tymoshenko, by the way, mentions her daughter very often - when she called the people to march towards the well-guarded presidential administration, for example, she said her daughter was there with her, too.)

To end this on a good note, Tymoshenko reminds me of my wonderful Kyiv University German professor, who used to be one of my idols when I was 19. And almost everyone I know has a crush on Tymoshenko, to some extent.