Former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko has said she will unite the country's democratic forces in opposition to the incumbent authorities. Tymoshenko was speaking on the "Shuster Live" talk show on the Ukrayina TV channel on the evening of March 5. "I will unite all democratic forces in the opposition. I will spare no effort to do this," Tymoshenko said, adding that they "will be defending the country in opposition". Speaking about the talks on formation of the new parliamentary coalition, she said "they blatantly violate the law".

Tymoshenko accused the pro-presidential Party of Regions of bribing MPs so that they join the new coalition. "They say we will not form a coalition by parliamentary factions but we will pay bribes to certain MPs who betrayed their teams," she said, adding that MPs were offered 3m-5m dollars for joining a coalition with the Party of Regions. "The Party of Regions is doing the same thing it was doing back in 2007, when MPs were purchased as, excuse me, raw meat," she said, "On that occasion Parliament was dissolved and it was said that actions like this were anti-constitutional."

She said that MP Mykola Azarov from the Party of Regions is most likely to become the prime minister once a new coalition is created. "The candidates for the premiership are Serhiy Tyhypko, (MP) Arseniy Yatseniuk, (former President) Viktor Yushchenko and Mykola Azarov. It is clear now what the agreements during the presidential election were about," Tymoshenko said, adding that the MPs who were joining the coalition now would be tricked and no compromise figure would be put forward as prime minister.

Tymoshenko said that the idea of a gas transport consortium, as advocated by President Viktor Yanukovych, "means giving away our strategic key energy asset worth at least 150bn dollars into private hands for free". "I ask the country, politicians, the people to prevent this. We do not have assets like these, this is the only thing we have left," Tymoshenko said.

Tymoshenko spoke for an hour. No-one was present in the studio during her speech, other guests appeared only after Tymoshenko had left.