Strongman, The

leadership and stood beside Yanukovych at ceremonies to mark the 60th anniversary of Ukraine’s liberation (by the Russians) from Nazi occupation. The spin doctors were doing a pretty good job. And at this stage the Russians were firmly convinced that Yushchenko stood no chance of being elected.
    But polling on 31 October proved them wrong. Yushchenko emerged fractionally ahead of Yanukovych, with both taking just under 40 per cent. A run-off between the two leading candidates was required, and this was set for Sunday 21 November.
    In that second round, an exit poll paid for by Western embassies put Yushchenko 11 percentage points ahead of his rival. But official results put the prime minister three points ahead. The result was denounced by Western election observers who said they had witnessed abuse of state resources in favour of Yanukovych. Yushchenko’s campaign chief, Oleh Rybachuk, recalls: ‘I was voting in a small polling station in the centre of Kiev. There were always very few people voting there, but on the day of that election there was a sudden queue of people with additional voting slips, who had arrived from the Donetsk region [Yanukovych’s heartland]. There were more of them than there were Kiev people who came to vote at their own polling station!’
    The fraud was so evident that Yushchenko supporters began to pour into Independence Square (known as Maidan) in central Kiev, setting up a tent city where they planned to sit it out until the result was changed. Orange became the colour of the revolution – chosen rather than the blue and yellow of the Ukrainian flag in order to avoid nationalist overtones. Over the next week or so, a million people joined in, besieging government buildings.
    Vladimir Putin, however, immediately rang Yanukovych to offer his congratulations. ‘It was a sharp fight,’ he said, ‘but an open and honest one, and your victory was convincing.’ Apart from ‘sharp’, every adjective could scarcely have been further off the mark. Being charitable, one might point out that he was in Brazil at the time, and maybe out of the loop. But what were his intelligence services telling him? His adviser Gleb Pavlovsky says it was no mistake, but a deliberate attempt by Putin to challenge the West in what he describes as an ‘international fight’ over the election result. ‘The congratulations served as a political signal. The fight for recognition of the results had started, and Putin took part in that fight. In the end, Russia lost, but if it had not, the result would have been different.’
    President Kuchma was paralysed. His capital city was witnessing the biggest display of people power Europe had seen since the fall of communism. He toyed with the idea of using force to remove the protestors, hoping all the while that the sub-zero temperatures would drive them away. They did not, and the demonstrators themselves remained entirely peaceful to avoid provoking violence. In the early hours of 23 November Kuchma called President Kwa ś niewski of Poland for advice. ‘He was incredibly nervous,’ Kwa ś niewski recalls, ‘and kept repeating, “I will not allow blood to be spilt here” – two or three times. He asked me to go to Kiev. I said, “It’s the middle of the night, I’ll see what I can do by morning.” ’ 7
    In the morning Kwa ś niewski called Tony Blair. Blair’s chief of staff, Jonathan Powell, recalls: ‘He was urging Tony to go with him to Kiev. But Tony was reluctant to do that because the Russians had this obsession that we were trying to surround them, that the West was moving into their sphere of influence. Tony decided not to do it.’
    The Polish president pulled together a European Union mission to mediate between the two candidates and President Kuchma. They would travel to Kiev by the end of the week. But events were moving fast.
    On Tuesday 23 November Yushchenko declared himself the winner and symbolically took the presidential oath. His running-mate Yulia Tymoshenko impetuously announced she would lead a march on the presidential administration, declaring, ‘Either they will give up power or we will take it.’ Her call provoked a row within the team. Rybachuk told her: ‘You shouldn’t be provoking the crowds like that. What if somebody gets killed?’
    ‘Then they’ll die as heroes,’ she replied, according to Rybachuk.
    The next day the Central Election Commission officially declared that Yanukovych had won. The United States,