KIEV, Ukraine, Nov. 28 -- On Ukraina television last week, viewers caught images of Viktor Yushchenko, the opposition candidate in this country's contested presidential election, greeting voters and kissing babies, standard glad-handing by a pol on the stump.
The broadcast of benevolent images of Yushchenko on a Russian-language channel that stridently supports his opponent, Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, was short-lived. Just as suddenly, the sequence cut to historical footage of Adolf Hitler, also greeting supporters and caressing the foreheads of German children thrust toward him by their beaming parents.
Yushchenko supporters, protesting in Kiev, have been called Russophobe extremists by backers of the prime minister.
(David Guttenfelder -- AP)
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The message, one that has been hammered home for months now, was clear: Yushchenko is a fascist.
Beyond a standoff that is playing out in the streets over allegations of electoral fraud in the Nov. 21 vote, the Ukrainian presidential election and its aftermath have been marked by crude propaganda that is exposing old fractures in this former Soviet republic. Differences over identity, language, culture and religion, which are broadly defined by an east-west divide, are bursting to the surface. The stoking of historical fears that divide what many perceive as a Russophile east and a nationalist west could continue long after the dispute over voting is settled, if it does not rupture the country first, analysts say.
"I think the tragedy of this campaign is the use of stereotypes by both sides, but especially Yanukovych's people," said Yulia Tishchenko, an analyst at the Ukrainian Center for Independent Political Research, "and the dangerous consequences are now becoming apparent. Everyone thinks that if they lose, they lose everything."
As tens of thousands of Yushchenko supporters continued to rally Sunday in Kiev, the capital, in a mixture of snow and drizzle, Yanukovych supporters gathered in Severodonetsk in the eastern part of the country. Yanukovych was declared the official winner in the election. But that verdict was blocked by the country's Supreme Court, which is expected to issue a ruling Monday that could open the way for new voting.
"I say that today we are on the brink of catastrophe," said Yanukovych, who continues to urge his supporters to exercise restraint. "There is one step to the edge. Do not take any radical steps. I repeat, none. . . . When the first drop of blood is spilled, we will not be able to stop it."
But after he left, 3,500 local officials from 17 regions in eastern and southern Ukraine voted unanimously to hold a referendum on the area's "regional status," an apparent first step to act on threats made in the last few days to break away from the rest of the country if Yushchenko wins the presidency.
"I have heard they are sending units here," a middle-aged man said on Ukraina television, referring to Yushchenko supporters. "We have nothing left to do but organize self-defense."
"The situation is very, very acute," said Anton Buteiko, the deputy chairman of the Ukrainian People's Party in Yushchenko's bloc and a former Ukrainian ambassador to the United States. "And this is a script that is being written in Moscow."
A key ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, attended the rally with Yanukovych, raising fears in Kiev that the Kremlin, which had backed Yanukovych, might encourage separatism or at least view moves toward it as a bargaining tool in talks on resolving the crisis.
"On the one hand, we see the Sabbath of witches who have been fattened up with oranges and who pretend that they represent the whole of the nation," Luzhkov said in comments broadcast on Russia's NTV television. "On the other hand, we see the peaceful power of constructive forces that has gathered in this hall."
The incumbent president, Leonid Kuchma, said in televised remarks that a compromise over the crisis was needed to avoid "unforeseeable consequences." He also said talks between representatives of the two camps over the elections, which international monitors described as marked by widespread fraud, were not going well.
"We demand the opening of a criminal inquiry against the separatist governors," said Yushchenko, speaking to the crowds in Kiev's Independence Square on Sunday afternoon.
