the whole article  

Sphere of Influence: Ukrainian Vote's Impact Reaches Beyond Borders --- Russia and the West Anxiously Await Results of Divisive Presidential Race --- What Caused a Candidate's Illness?

KIEV, Ukraine -- Driven by bodyguards in an armored limousine to his heavily secured home outside Kiev late Friday, Viktor Yuschenko, the opposition candidate in this coming Sunday's closely fought presidential election, turned his disfigured face to say: "I am convinced this was not a coincidence. I am convinced it was a planned, political act."

Mr. Yuschenko believes he was attacked with some form of chemical or biological agent, or a "cocktail of viruses" in early September. The mix of symptoms -- paralysis and swollen skin lesions across his face, acute pancreatitis, a sudden eruption of stomach ulcers and delayed muscle spasms across his back that required a high-dose epidural -- left Mr. Yuschenko's Austrian physician, Michael Zimpfer, senior doctor at the Rudolfinerhaus hospital in Vienna, stumped.

No traces of poison were found in forensic tests for classic poisons, Dr. Zimpfer said in a telephone interview, but the symptoms didn't match any illness he had seen before. He suspects some advanced chemical or bacteriological compound may have been used, but has no hard evidence. Ukraine's state prosecutor has ruled that Mr. Yuschenko had a virus, and the government of Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, the other main candidate in the election, denies any role. Further tests on blood and tissue samples are being performed in the U.S. and elsewhere.

Mr. Yuschenko's alleged poisoning is the latest sign of the bitterness of a presidential campaign that could determine the direction of this former Soviet republic that has a territory larger than France and a population of 48 million.

Twenty-four candidates are running for election Sunday. Messrs. Yuschenko and Yanukovych are running neck and neck, far ahead of the field, according to most recent opinion polls, making a runoff vote likely next month. Mr. Yanukovych is backed by the Ukraine's current president, Leonid Kuchma.

The contest has sucked in Russia and the U.S., with each side believing Ukraine's presidential vote is crucial to whether the country -- which borders the newly expanded European Union to the west, and Russia to the east -- integrates with Euro-Atlantic or Russian-led alliances and economies. While Ukraine's economy contracted by about 60% during the 1990s, the International Monetary Fund forecasts growth of more than 12% this year.

The election also has broader implications for the region. Ukraine's democracy is among the most open of the former Soviet republics. As Russia turns more authoritarian under President Vladimir Putin, any backsliding in Ukraine's democratic commitment would have negative implications for countries from Belarus -- Europe's last dictatorship -- to Georgia, according to a Western diplomat in Kiev.

But after witnessing the replacement of former President Eduard Shevardnadze -- who resigned as Georgia's president following public protests of allegedly rigged elections -- with the U.S.-supported Mikhail Saakashvili, Russia also sees Ukraine's vote as critical to assuring Moscow's influence in its own backyard. About 20% of Ukraine's population is ethnic Russian.

"This is a global play, and Russia is playing for the first time in 15 years, which is why people are so surprised. Suddenly, the rest of the world is finding out that Russia has some national interests," says Vyacheslav Nikonov, president of the Moscow-based Polity Foundation, who has spent much of the election campaign in Kiev. "With Yuschenko, Ukraine could be in [the North Atlantic Treaty Organization] soon, very soon."

The election campaign already has provoked Western diplomatic reaction against unfairness. In a recent speech, U.S. Ambassador John Herbst cited biased state television coverage (the sole pro-opposition channel, TV5, had its license to broadcast in Kiev revoked last week); obstruction of opposition events (two plainclothes policemen were detained among a mob that attacked opposition supporters Saturday); and use of state prosecution and tax authorities to put pressure on businesses that support Mr. Yuschenko.

For his part, Mr. Yuschenko lashes the government in stump speeches as criminals. "We can't afford to miss the train to the European Union," Mr. Yuschenko said in an interview, adding that the election represents a choice for Ukraine between the Polish and Russian models of post-Soviet development. Mr. Yuschenko, a former prime minister credited with halting Ukraine's economic collapse, has called for mass street protests if there is ballot-box fraud. The government has warned of a potential street revolution by a partly U.S.-financed student group called Pora ("It's Time"), and is conducting a sweep of activists it accuses of terrorism.

"For everyone involved, there's too much at stake to lose," says Sergei Yevtuschenko, director of the Kiev-based Institute for Euro-Atlantic Cooperation. Money and political power in Ukraine are closely intertwined, with a handful of groups known as clans running an economy based largely on the production of metals and chemicals. A change of regime could threaten several multibillion-dollar empires.

Russia's involvement in Ukraine's election, meanwhile, is unapologetic. On Thursday, Mr. Putin is set to stand alongside Messrs. Kuchma and Yanukovych at an annual military parade to celebrate Kiev's World War II liberation from Nazi Germany -- three days before the election. The celebration has been moved forward from its usual date of Nov. 6, which would have been a week after the vote.

Election billboards for Mr. Yanukovych dot the streets of Moscow. After a fierce debate in the Central Election Commission Saturday, the government got last-minute permission to open 41 new polling stations for Ukrainians living in Russia, with a potential 123,000 additional votes at stake. Mr. Yuschenko calls that "an invitation to falsification," because there will be no international observers to monitor the stations.

Mr. Putin's support has come at a price. Mr. Yanukovych has promised a referendum to make Russian Ukraine's second official language and to negotiate dual citizenship for Russians and Ukrainians. He has dropped Ukraine's strategic goal of joining NATO, saying Ukraine should only join a security alliance that includes Russia. The government has reversed a commitment to transport oil pumped in the Caspian region by U.S. and other oil companies, from the Black Sea port of Odessa to Europe via western Ukraine. Instead, the pipeline will pump Russian oil to Odessa, and out to the world market by sea.

Russian backing is likely to be a boon for Mr. Yanukovych, analysts say. Opinion polls repeatedly have shown Mr. Putin is the most popular politician among Ukrainians and that better relations with Russia are among voters' top priorities, although those polls hide divisions between the more pro-Russian eastern part of the country, and the more pro-European west.

That is a sharp turnaround from a decade ago. In the early 1990s, most Ukrainians, newly and nervously independent of Moscow, saw the U.S. and NATO as welcome guarantors of security from their unpredictable larger neighbor. But in the wake of the 1999 NATO bombing of fellow Slavs in Yugoslavia, and the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq last year, U.S. stock has fallen, and NATO is widely distrusted. A September opinion poll by the Ukrainian Sociology Institute found only 7% of Ukrainians favored keeping the country's 1,600 troops in Iraq. Mr. Yuschenko has promised to pull the troops out if elected, despite being seen as the more pro-Western candidate.

Earlier this month, supporters of Mr. Yuschenko found several million brightly colored posters, and by their count 150 tons of other printed anti-Yuschenko propaganda, in a government-owned warehouse. Two posters pictured Mr. Yuschenko dressed as Uncle Sam, the caption on one: "Bosnia & Herzegovina, Kosovo, Iraq . . . You're next." All sought to portray Mr. Yuschenko as backed by the U.S., in the apparent belief this would lose him votes.

Stepan Gavrish, a legislator and senior member of Mr. Yanukovych's campaign team, acknowledged that the posters -- which breach Ukrainian laws and haven't been distributed -- were found on property belonging to the presidential administration, but said the government didn't control all of its property and the posters had no connection with Mr. Yanukovych.

Mr. Yuschenko's sickness kept him off the campaign trail for a month from September to October. That absence, together with Mr. Yanukovych's recent promises on Russian language and citizenship, and a decision to double pensions effective immediately, has eliminated Mr. Yuschenko's once solid lead in opinion polls. Mr. Gavrish dismisses the idea that Mr. Yuschenko was poisoned, saying the sickness was a result of the candidate's "lifestyle."

Both sides are focusing on Election Day, when the opposition expects the government to attempt ballot-box fraud, as it did in an April mayoral election whose result was then cancelled. "The only question is the degree," says Boris Tarasyuk, a former Ukrainian foreign minister who backs Mr. Yuschenko.

In addition to 650 international election observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the U.S. is financing 1,000 observers, mainly from Eastern Europe, in an attempt to ensure a fair vote. Poland has said it will send observers, too. Meanwhile, the Russian-led Commonwealth of Independent States has said it will send its own group of observers, and may conduct its own exit polls to test against the results.

Also promising its own parallel vote counts to prevent fraud is the Pora student movement that operates out of a Kiev basement apartment. Pora -- advised by members of the Serbian Otpor youth movement, which was involved in elections in Serbia and Georgia -- also plans peaceful demonstrations if widespread fraud is discovered, says the group's coordinator, Vladyslav Kaskyv.

(MORE)

But the government has started to crack down on Pora. Prosecutors opened an investigation of Pora on charges of terrorism on Oct. 18, after police allegedly found a homemade explosive in one of Pora's offices. Mr. Kaskyv challenged the discovery, saying it was made only after a search by police sniffer dogs found nothing and witnesses were removed. Since then, Pora members have been detained at a rate of about 30 per day, and 40 were in jail last week, Mr. Kaskyv said.

By Marc Champion
1,724 words
26 October 2004
The Wall Street Journal Europe
(Copyright (c) 2004, Dow Jones & Company, Inc.)