Intense Campaign Down To the Wire in Ukraine

Opposition presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko campaigning in Kirovograd, away from the traveling zoo that blocked planned rally spot. (Peter Finn -- The Washington Post)

KIROVOGRAD, Ukraine -- Viktor Yushchenko, the leading opposition candidate for the presidency of Ukraine, planned to hold a rally on Tuesday in a central square in this small city. But over the weekend, city officials suddenly moved a traveling zoo and amusement park onto the square, forcing Yushchenko's backers to scurry for another location.

"They will try anything to harass us, even tigers and bears and zebras, but it won't work," said Irina Gerashchenko, a spokeswoman for the candidate, as she scanned a crowd of about 15,000 people who showed up Tuesday at a square away from the city center.

On Sunday, Ukraine will hold elections following an intensely competitive campaign marred by dirty tricks, bombings and harassment on a scale unusual even by the standards of post-Soviet electioneering.

The opposition also faces accusations of rough tactics, including inciting violence aimed at intimidating electoral officials. But perhaps the most controversial claim is that government agents poisoned Yushchenko last summer. He disappeared from view for five weeks, reemerging to campaign with his formerly youthful face disfigured. The government denies the accusation.

Torn by the pulls of neighboring Russia and the West, this country of 48 million people has swung between emerging democracy and authoritarianism in the 13 years since it gained independence with the collapse of the Soviet Union. In the past year, it has strengthened military ties with the United States, sending 1,650 troops to the multinational force in Iraq despite public skepticism.

There are 26 candidates running, but the race is effectively between two men: the ruling party candidate, Viktor Yanukovych, 54, who is backed by Russia and favors closer ties, and Yushchenko, 50, a former prime minister, who champions rapid integration with the West, notably the European Union.

"This election is not about left or right," said Vadim Karasev, director of the Institute for Global Strategies, a political research group. "It's a historic struggle between the past and the future. Whoever wins is going to consolidate the character of the country's development for a long time."

Yanukovych is the handpicked successor of the current president, Leonid Kuchma, whose 10 years in power have been shadowed by accusations of political killings and the enrichment of associates, including his son-in-law, through questionable privatizations of key industries.

Orphaned at age 5, Yanukovych had a troubled youth and was convicted separately for robbery and assault. He was later pardoned, and after gaining a degree in mechanical engineering, he rose to become governor of Donetsk, a city at the center of Ukraine's metal and mining industries.

"I came from a very poor family, and my main dream in life was to break out of this poverty," Yanukovych told the Ukrainian media recently. He declined to be interviewed for this article.

Yanukovych was appointed prime minister in 2002 and began this campaign badly trailing Yushchenko. But he has steadily risen in the polls following his decision last month to nearly double all pensions in the country. "People see what they have in their pockets and on their tables," said Sergei Tigipko, Yanukovych's campaign manager.

"A month ago it looked like a catastrophe," said one campaign consultant who works for the prime minister. "Now I think he can win, and win without falsifying the vote."

The two candidates are now neck-and-neck with Yanukovych slightly ahead, according to opinion polls commissioned by groups sympathetic to each camp.

The prime minister has clearly benefited from his almost complete domination of airtime on state-controlled television networks. Broadcast journalists, speaking anonymously, said they receive almost daily orders telling them what to cover and how to cover it.