Ukraine's rail and aviation systems ran normally Thursday, despite Yushchenko's call for a general strike and urging by some of his key supporters for transportation systems and schools to be shuttered. With the opposition campaign reduced to saying it would block some government buildings and major highways Friday, the Supreme Court decision came as a major boost.
"The initiative has shifted," said Vladimir Polokhalo, editor of Political Thought magazine. "There is nothing the government can do legally, and we have to hope, although I fear the worst, that they will not now turn to force."
A supporter of Ukraine's opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko places flowers in police shields in Kiev. The Supreme Court has agreed to hear opposition charges of fraud in Sunday's presidential vote.
(Gleb Garanich -- Reuters)
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"It's the beginning of our victory," said Pavel Golubev, 30, a car salesman who was in Independence Square with his wife and father. "It's hope," added his father, Ruslan Golubev, 60. "This is great."
The court's decision surprised many Ukrainians, suggesting as it did that the legitimacy of the election was being questioned in parts of society that were previously in the government's corner.
A general in the country's security service, successor to the Soviet-era KGB, addressed the crowd Thursday in Independence Square and pledged that key parts of the country's security apparatus would remain on the sidelines. Journalists at 1+1 television, a commercial station whose staff acknowledged promoting Yanukovych, said management had freed them to provide fair coverage.
"We recognize our responsibility in broadcasting biased information after being pressured by different political forces," the journalists at 1+1 said in a statement. The channel is controlled by Kuchma's chief of staff.
"From today . . . we guarantee that any information that we broadcast will be complete and objective," the statement continued.
Such a shift in coverage would mean that unfiltered pictures of demonstrations here would be broadcast into eastern Ukraine, where support for Yanukovych is strongest and viewers have been told a fascist coup was underway in Kiev.
"You can't believe the propaganda that we've been watching," said Vladimir Litvinuck, 50, a resident of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine, where Yanukovych was formerly governor.
At the state television station, 237 journalists a signed letter to management demanding the right to broadcast the mass protests live.
Rallies in support of Yushchenko have begun to spring up in the east. In Kharkiv, about 30,000 Yushchenko backers turned out on Thursday, according to Ukrainian television reports. Even in Luhansk, a key Yanukovych city, 2,000 workers marched for the opposition candidate. There have also been pro-Yushchenko rallies in Donetsk.
Earlier Thursday, Yanukovych's campaign manager offered a compromise proposal. Under its terms, some power would shift from the president to parliament, where Yushchenko's party is strong; there would no retribution against Yushchenko's supporters by a Yanukovych administration; and equal access to the media would be guaranteed for all leading politicians.
At a joint appearance with former Polish president Lech Walesa, who was invited to Kiev by the opposition, Yushchenko rejected the plan as a tactical maneuver.
Walesa, the legendary leader of the Solidarity movement that toppled a Communist government in neighboring Poland, had offered to serve as a mediator and said at a morning news conference that he planned to meet with Yanukovych. But on Thursday evening he refused to say if he had done so. Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski is due to arrive in Kiev on Friday to meet with Kuchma, the Polish press agency PAP reported.
