Word: yanukovych
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Dates: during 2004-2004
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It was both a symbol and a symptom of the revolution that rippled across Ukraine last week. On Thursday, as the presenter of state-controlled UT1's main morning news program was updating viewers on the Central Electoral Commission's decision to declare Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych the winner of the country's Nov. 21 presidential vote, Natalya Dmitruk, the woman who translates broadcasts into sign language, decided to send a very different message. "When the presenter started to read the news," Dmitruk tells TIME, "I said, 'I address all deaf viewers. Yushchenko is our President. Do not believe...
...poverty." What he often fails to mention in his Horatio Alger-style tale is that as a teenager he spent almost four years in jail for robbery and assault, though the charges were later reversed. Genial but wooden tongued and more fluent in Russian than in Ukrainian, Yanukovych is reminiscent of a Soviet-era party boss, an image aided by his 6-ft.- 6-in., 240-lb. frame. That style goes down well in his conservative home base in the Donbass, Ukraine's industrial powerhouse, where the Russian-leaning (and -speaking) population tends to view his rival, Viktor Yushchenko...
After what his official biography calls his "youthful indiscretions," Yanukovych worked as an engineer, a factory manager and the Governor of Donetsk before President Leonid Kuchma named him Prime Minister two years ago. Since then he has presided over dynamic economic growth and, more recently, doubled pensions. Despite enjoying Russian President Vladimir Putin's energetic support, Yanukovych has seemed out of his depth in the current political crisis. At one point last week, he pledged to support a free press and transfer some presidential powers to the legislature. Soon after, he denounced Yushchenko for trying to mount a "coup...
Independent Ukraine's fourth presidential election since the collapse of the Soviet Union was supposed to reach a conclusion in the Nov. 21 runoff. On Monday the Electoral Commission said preliminary tallies showed Moscow's favored candidate, Yanukovych, ahead by 3 percentage points. But immediately there were widespread accusations by Ukrainian and foreign monitors of massive fraud--including voter intimidation, physical assaults and the torching of ballot boxes. Yet the state-controlled media, which had backed Yanukovych through the five-month campaign, were reporting no major violations. Convinced that the election was being stolen from the rightful victor, supporters...
...vote, Parliament declared the poll results invalid but did not recommend a date for the rerun, although many deputies expect that to happen in mid-December. The Supreme Court, which has final jurisdiction over elections, will examine the fraud allegations and make its ruling this week. But news that Yanukovych would not be inaugurated caused jubilation in Kiev, where hundreds of thousands continued their vigil. "Nobody will stop us now," exulted Vasily, a Kiev engineer...