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Profile: Viktor Yanukovych When Viktor Yanukovych entered the Ukrainian election race, he was seen by many as outgoing President Leonid Kuchma's man. No more. Following the cancellation of the second round result amid mass protests by the "orange" opposition against poll fraud, relations between the candidate and Mr Kuchma rapidly cooled. In his televised debate with challenger Viktor Yushchenko on 20 December, Mr Yanukovych even referred to the "illegal decisions" taken by "the authorities embodied by Kuchma united with representatives of the orange coup". Some observers watching the debate concluded that the champion of Ukraine's industrial east appeared resigned to losing the election. "Yanukovych seemed to have given up and appears no longer fit for the fight," independent political analyst Volodymyr Malinkovich told AFP news agency. Meteoric rise Prime minister since November 2002, the Donetsk politician initially had the backing of the coalition of forces loyal to Mr Kuchma in the Ukrainian parliament. Born into the family of a metalworker and a nurse in the eastern town of Yenakiyevo in July 1950, Mr Yanukovych had a troubled childhood. He was twice jailed for violent crimes in his youth but his official biography states that his convictions were eventually quashed. "I came from a very poor family and my main dream in life was to break out of this poverty," he once told journalists. Beginning his career as a transport executive in the Soviet Union's key coal-mining industry in eastern Ukraine, he became a Doctor of Economics - the equivalent of a PhD - in 2000. He became governor of the Donetsk region, home to more than three million people and the economic powerhouse of Ukraine, less than a year after entering the local administration. Some see him as the figurehead of Donetsk's political and business groups and associate him with local oligarch Rinat Akhmetov. Supporters say Donetsk secured unprecedented levels of investment during his governorship. His approach can appear uncompromising and in one interview he said he found the "red-hot poker" the best instrument for dealing with corruption. Language problem Although he learned Ukrainian after taking office, Mr Yanukovych often finds it difficult to express himself in literary Ukrainian and switches to Russian when dealing with difficult subjects. He used both languages during the debate with Mr Yushchenko. As prime minister, Mr Yanukovych trod a careful line between his projected image as defender of the Russian-speaking east of Ukraine and the statist nature of Mr Kuchma's entourage, determined to preserve Ukraine's independence. He was, however, clearly the presidential candidate most favoured by Russia's Vladimir Putin and his advisers. His portrait was plastered all over Moscow and Russia provided him with photo opportunities, including an unprecedented, televised get-together with President Putin on his birthday. Egg incident Mr Yanukovych's opponents have often made fun of his appearance - he is almost two metres tall (6ft 6ins) and is reported to weigh at least 110kg (240lb). He has often played up his physical prowess, stressing his skills as a parachutist and a pilot. Given this, he was widely ridiculed after the now infamous "egg incident" in Ivano-Frankivsk, when an opposition activist threw an egg at him in public. Mr Yanukovych collapsed to the ground, groaning and clutching his chest. Initially hospitalised in intensive care, he recovered within hours and went on television to say he felt sorry for the "wayward" youngster who had thrown the egg.
Story from BBC NEWS: Profile: Viktor Yushchenko Once a cautious and loyal technocrat, Viktor Yushchenko is now leader of Ukraine's powerful opposition that is demanding radical political change. Trained as an accountant, Mr Yushchenko drew Western admiration after leading some of Ukraine's bravest reform efforts in President Leonid Kuchma's quarrelsome governments. The 50-year-old former reformist prime minister broke ranks with Mr Kuchma to form his Our Ukraine opposition bloc. For many he represents a historic chance to forge new ties between Ukraine and the West. Mr Yushchenko has accused Ukrainian authorities of trying to poison him in the run-up to a presidential vote marred by fraud. Doctors in the Austrian capital, Vienna, have said extensive tests showed a form of dioxin had been used. Economic stewardship Mr Yushchenko is not a "zapadenets" - a native of Western Ukraine, where pro-Europe and anti-Russian sentiment is strongest and where he now enjoys the highest support. In fact he was born in the Sumy region of north-eastern Ukraine, on the border with Russia, in 1954. He hails from an agricultural and predominantly Ukrainian-speaking area. In that respect he differs from many of his opponents, whose native tongue is Russian. After university he pursued a financial career, starting as a village accountant and then gradually moving to much higher posts in former Soviet Ukraine's banking system. In 1993 he became head of the national bank of the newly emerged independent Ukraine. Under his direction of the country's monetary system, Ukraine moved from hyperinflation and surrogate money to the hryvnya - the country's own and fairly stable currency. From ally to opponent After managing to reduce the impact of the Russian debt default in 1998, Mr Yushchenko was appointed Ukrainian prime minister by President Kuchma. Many analysts believe that while Mr Yushchenko was serving in that post Mr Kuchma was preparing him to become his successor. As the country's economy improved, with salaries and pensions paid on time and corruption reduced, nobody doubted the prime minister's loyalty to the president. The liberal and nationalist opposition urged him to become their leader, but Mr Yushchenko remained, at least officially, on the presidential side. However, his popularity across the country sharply contrasted with Mr Kuchma's tiny ratings, and in 2001 the president dismissed him, staking all on the support of industrial groups based in eastern Ukraine and Moscow. Freed from the forced alliance with the president, Mr Yushchenko now did not hesitate to accept the opposition leadership offer. He became head of the "Our Ukraine" bloc, which at the next parliamentary election managed to gain enough votes to seriously challenge the authorities. Scarred Mr Yushchenko started the presidential campaign as Ukraine's most popular politician, and it took an enormous propaganda effort on state-run TV channels to make his rival, Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, look like a real contender. There were numerous attempts to discredit Mr Yushchenko, but nothing had a greater impact than his poisoning, which left scars and blisters on his face weeks before the crucial vote. His team claims this was yet another dirty trick by his opponents. Russian TV channels and spin doctors close to the Kremlin portray Mr Yushchenko as an agent of the West who would plunge Ukraine into civil war. However, Mr Yushchenko has never indulged in anti-Russian rhetoric and gets praise and support from Russian liberal politicians. But he makes clear that it is a "velvet revolution" against the Moscow-influenced elite that is on his mind. He often refers to Georgia's example - the mass protests which toppled Eduard Shevardnadze in 2003. "Georgia gave its answer to the question of how to resolve this situation, Ukraine will give its own," he says.
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The following is an excerpt from Yushchenko's speech broadcast by
Reported by: ACTION UKRAINE REPORT-04, No. 275: ARTICLE NUMBER ONE www.ArtUkraine.com
Country profile: Ukraine Ukraine gained independence after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Sandwiched between Russia and Europe, it tries to keep on good terms with both. Western Ukraine has close historical ties with Europe, particularly Poland. Both Orthodoxy and the Uniate (Greek Catholic) faith have many followers there. Ukrainian nationalist sentiment is traditionally strongest in the westernmost parts of the country which became part of Ukraine only when the Soviet Union expanded after World War II. A significant minority of the population of Ukraine are Russians or use Russian as their first language. Russian influence is particularly strong in the industrialised east of the country, where the Orthodox religion is predominant, as well as in Crimea, an autonomous republic on the Black Sea which was part of Russia until 1954. The Russian Black Sea Fleet has its base there. Crimea is also the homeland of the Crimean Tatars whom Stalin accused of collaborating with the Nazis and deported to Central Asia in 1944. Over 250,000 have returned since the late 1980s. In 1932-1933 Stalin's programme of enforced agricultural collectivization brought famine and death to millions in Ukraine, the bread basket of the USSR. Not until the twilight years of the Soviet Union did details of the extent of the suffering begin fully to emerge. News of another Soviet-era calamity, the 1986 accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power station, rang alarm bells around the world immediately. About 8% of Ukraine's territory was contaminated as were large areas in neighbouring Belarus. Millions continue to suffer as a result. The country's first president after independence, former Communist Party official Leonid Kravchuk, presided over a period of economic decline and runaway inflation. He was narrowly defeated in the 1994 presidential election by Leonid Kuchma. The economy continued to fare badly under President Kuchma who became embroiled in a series of stand-offs with parliament and failed to push ahead with economic reforms. Corruption is a major problem and investors have been wary. However, the new millennium brought economic growth for the first time, with rising industrial output, improving exports and falling inflation. Throughout the last decade Ukrainian foreign policy has played a delicate balancing act between the West and Russia It played an active part in Nato's Partnership for Peace programme and has declared EU membership to be a strategic objective. In May 2002 it announced that it intended to abandon neutrality and apply formally for Nato membership. The alliance has welcomed the bid but says that further political, economic and military reforms are needed before it can be successful. Nevertheless, Ukraine has sent over 1500 peacekeepers to Iraq as part of the stabilisation force led by Poland, a Nato member, and has also contributed troops to peacekeeping operations in Kosovo and Afghanistan.
President (outgoing): Leonid Kuchma Opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko won December's re-run of the troubled 2004 presidential elections. Election officials said he gained 52% of the vote; his rival, former Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, polled 44%. Mr Yushchenko said the result heralded "the beginning of a new great democracy". But Mr Yanukovych said he would not concede defeat, and alleged electoral irregularities. The original vote in November precipitated a political crisis. After a period of mass street protest over alleged election fraud, the Supreme Court declared the elections invalid. Parliament approved changes to the election law intended to minimise the risk of fraud the second time round. It also adopted amendments to the constitution which are expected to pave the way for a parliamentary republic from January 2006. When the country's electoral commission declared President Kuchma's favoured successor, Viktor Yanukovych, the winner in the original vote, the opposition cried foul. Many thousands of its supporters took to the steets and surrounded government buildings in Kiev. There were counterdemonstrations by supporters of Mr Yanukovych. Western observers reported widespread major irregularities although their CIS counterparts declared the election above board. Mr Yushchenko, an economist and banker by training and prime minister between 1999 and 2001, is regarded as a pro-Western liberal reformer. He has repeatedly accused the authorities of corruption. Austrian doctors who treated Mr Yushchenko when he fell ill in the run-up to the elections have confirmed that he suffered dioxin poisoning. The Ukrainian authorities have reopened their investigations. Many Ukrainian media outlets are privately-owned but this does not prevent the government and authorities from trying to influence their output. While the authorities attempt to keep the media in line, Ukraine still has a significant - albeit struggling - opposition media. The Kuchma government has seen the closure of several opposition papers. But the range of opinions represented in the national press suggests that the printed media enjoy much more freedom than TV and radio stations. During the political turmoil that followed disputed presidential elections in November 2004, journalists at the state-run TV rejected the network's usual pro-government line. For the first time in years, opposition views were aired in a balanced way. Several journalists investigating high-profile crimes have died in mysterious circumstances. Journalist Georgiy Gongadze disappeared in 2000, his body was found and eventually identified a year later. In 2003 the media watchdog Reporters Without Borders noted that physical attacks on investigative journalists had increased "alarmingly". The organisation also condemned "a raft of press freedom violations" during the 2004 presidential elections. Ukraine's commercial TV networks, particularly Inter TV and Studio 1+1, attract the lion's share of the viewing audience. The FM radio band in Kiev is busy, with more than 20 stations competing for listeners. The press · Fakty i Kommentarii - mass-circulation daily · Silski Visti - daily, popular among rural readership · Vecherniye Vesti - mass-circulation daily · Segodnya - mass-circulation daily · Kievskiye Vedomosti - daily · Kyiv Post - English-language daily · Den - daily, English-language pages · Zerkalo Nedeli - political weekly, English- language pages · Ukrayinska Pravda - online news, English-language pages Television · National TV Company of Ukraine - state-run, operates UT1, UT2, UT3 networks · Inter TV - national, commercial · Studio 1+1 - national, commercial · STB - commercial · Novy Kanal - commercial · ICTV - commercial · 5 Kanal - commercial Radio · National Radio Company of Ukraine - state-run, operates UR1, Promin, Radio Muz networks · Russkoye Radio - commercial · Europa Plus - commercial · Hit FM - commercial · Nashe FM - commercial News agencies · UNIAN · Interfax-Ukraine - English-language page
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UKRAINE DIVIDED - A HISTORY Stephen Mulvey BBC News Ukraine's election map reflects its history. Yushchenko was born close to the Russian border It has always been a divided country, though there are several different fault lines relating to language, religion, culture and politics and they are not always clearly delineated. The most obvious geographical dividing line is the Dnieper river, which runs through the capital, Kiev, curls south-east to Zaporizhia and then turns back to empty into the Black Sea at Kherson. Historically, the land to the west has been known as Right Bank, the land to the east as Left Bank. Click here to see a regional breakdown of the official results Very crudely, Russian is the dominant language on most of the Left Bank, at least in the large urban centres, and Ukrainian on the Right. Orthodoxy is the dominant religion on the Left Bank, while on the Right it co-exists with the Uniate (or Greek Catholic) church, which combines Orthodox service rites with allegiance to the Pope. The Uniate church was formed as the Ukrainian aristocracy was coming under the influence of Catholic Poland at the end of the 16th Century. Anti-Soviet resistance Poland, and later Austria, dominated the westernmost regions of the country for hundreds of years. These regions only joined the rest of the country in the Russian/Soviet empire after World War II - very much against their will. Some western Ukrainians were so bitterly anti-Soviet that they took the Nazi side in World War II. Others fought both the German and Soviet armies hoping to carve out an independent state. Armed resistance to the Soviet regime continued in the Carpathian mountains throughout the 1950s. The western regions of Galicia (which includes Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk and Ternopil) and Volyn are still a stronghold of nationalist sentiment. The bulk of Ukraine's Russian minority (some 17% of the total judging by the 2001 census) meanwhile lives on the Left Bank (including Crimea) - and in Odessa, which also voted for Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych. Part of the Russian population in the east arrived to work in the heavy i ndustries, such as coal, steel and chemicals, that were developed under Stalin. Crimea, meanwhile, became a favourite retirement home for the Soviet elite. This population was the most Sovietised, while the population in the west of the country had the strongest cultural links with the rest of Central Europe. This translates today into a general orientation towards Moscow, on the one hand, and a general orientation to Europe, and the EU, on the other. The divisions are not always as neat and simple as they may seem, however. Some northern Left Bank regions voted for Yushchenko, just as some southern Right Bank regions voted for Yanukovych. Central regions of the country have tended to be Ukraine's versions of "swing states" in the US. It is also said that the purest Ukrainian language is spoken in the Poltava region - which is on the Left rather than the Right bank. The language spoken by Ukrainian villagers in fact changes gradually from Ukrainian to Russian, as one travels from west to east, while dialects in the far west include strong Polish influences. Cossack nostalgia Leonid Kuchma, from Dnipropetrovsk, and Viktor Yanukovych, from Donetsk, both easterners, made efforts to learn Ukrainian once they gained high political office. And opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko, darling of the nationalists, was born in a village in the Sumy region, close to the Russian border in eastern Ukraine. Yanukovych attempted to learn Ukrainian after gaining high office Ukrainian nationalists often regard the era of the Cossacks - rebels who defied both Russian and Polish overlords in the 17th Century - as their country's golden age. But they inhabited the Left Bank as much as the Right. The most famous Cossack settlement was on an island in the middle of the Dnieper at Zaporizhia. It would also be wrong to portray Ukraine as a country inhabited only by Ukrainians and Russians. Poles and Jews once made up a l arge part of the urban population, particularly in central and western areas of the country. Crimea is the homeland of the Crimean Tatars, who were deported to Central Asia in 1944, but have slowly been returning. There are also sizable Belarusian, Moldovan, Bulgarian, Hungarian and Romanian minorities, each making up between 0.3 and 0.6% of the overall population. ========================