Her supporters in court, including national lawmakers, squabbled with riot police, trying to prevent them from driving her away in a prison car and shouting: “Shame! Shame!“

Dozens of Tymoshenko’s supporters then gathered outside the court building in central Kiev and tried to block the road, but riot police pushed them aside.

The charismatic Tymoshenko, the country’s top opposition leader, has criticized the trial as an attempt by President Viktor Yanukovych to bar her from elections and mocked the court.

She has refused to rise when addressing the court, as required, and routinely insulted the judge. Her supporters have repeatedly disrupted hearings.

Complying with the presiding judge’s orders, police surrounded Tymoshenko and escorted her out of the courtroom.

The 50-year-old opposition leader is charged with abusing her powers by signing a natural gas import contract with Russia in 2009 that prosecutors claim was disadvantageous to Ukraine.

Tymoshenko insists she is innocent, arguing that the contract ended weeks of natural gas disruptions to Ukrainian and European consumers and that she was authorized to sign the deal as prime minister.

Experts in Ukraine and abroad believe the trial’s real motive is to disqualify Tymoshenko from upcoming parliamentary and presidential elections by convicting her as a felon.

Tymoshenko has a long and bitter history with Yanukovych.

She was the central figure in Ukraine’s 2004 Orange Revolution mass protests that threw out Yanukovych’s fraud-tainted victory in a presidential election and led to another vote that brought a pro-Western government to power.

Tymoshenko became prime minister, but Ukrainians grew frustrated by economic hardships, slow reforms and endless bickering in the Orange camp. As a result, she lost to Kremlin-friendly Yanukovych in the 2010 presidential election.