Quotes of the Day

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 UT-1'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 for the deaf, decided to send a very different message. "When the presenter started to read the news," Dmitruk told TIME, "I said: 'I address all deaf viewers. [Challenger Viktor] Yushchenko is our President. Do not believe the Electoral Commission. They are lying.'" In a week filled with extraordinary acts of political protest, Dmitruk's silent rebellion was one of the most defiant.

Independent Ukraine's fourth presidential election since the collapse of the Soviet Union was supposed to reach a final conclusion in the Nov. 21 runoff. On Monday, the Electoral Commission said preliminary tallies showed Moscow's favored candidate, Yanukovych, ahead by three percentage points. But immediately, there were widespread accusations by Ukrainian and foreign monitors of massive fraud that included 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 the election was being stolen from the rightful victor, supporters of Western-leaning opposition leader Yushchenko poured into Kiev's Independence Square to demand that their man be recognized as the winner. City residents mixed with swarms of protesters from across the country, all of them wearing something orange, the color of Yushchenko's Our Ukraine party. Despite heavy snow and freezing temperatures, the crowd was in a festive mood, eager to embrace Yushchenko's orange revolution against the country's Moscow-backed old guard.

When a mob of students took over part of the nearby Ministry of Education building, staffers served them tea and cookies. Yushchenko, his face disfigured by what he claims was an attempt by government authorities to poison him in September, urged people not to leave the Square until the Electoral Commission's ruling was overturned. "We appeal to citizens of Ukraine to support the national resistance movement," he told the cheering throng. "We should not leave this square until we secure victory."

And his supporters did just that. On Saturday evening, after six days of nonstop, peaceful protests, the state and its candidate were forced to back down. In a nonbinding vote, Parliament declared the poll results invalid and recommended a re-run, perhaps as early as mid-December. This week the Supreme Court, which has final jurisdiction over elections, will examine the fraud allegations and make its own ruling. But the news that Yanukovych would not be inaugurated just yet caused jubilation in Kiev, where hundreds of thousands continued their vigil. "Nobody will stop us now," exulted Vasily, 35, a Kiev engineer. In a race that was fought largely over whether Ukraine would pursue Western-style reforms and closer ties to Europe or stick with state control and a tight relationship with Russia, coming this far was a remarkable achievement for Yushchenko. But even if he does ultimately prevail at the ballot box, that doesn't mean the crisis is over. Ukraine remains a divided and distrustful nation of about 48 million people, where the Russian-speaking, industrialized eastern part of the country backs Yanukovych and the more nationalistic, agricultural west wants Yushchenko.

The two camps are as polarized as the reporting on Dmitruk's morning news broadcast. While Yushchenko's voters celebrated in Kiev and the west, a wave of rallies rolled through Yanukovych strongholds in the east to protest what people there saw as a stolen vote. Political leaders angrily rejected the suggestion to hold another poll and demanded the creation of a new autonomous region. Some even threatened to call for their regions to be annexed by Russia. The electoral impasse could crack the country apart along the acute cultural and political rifts that divide it. "What has happened amounts to the beginning of a cold civil war," says Kiev-based political analyst Konstantin Bondarenko. "The ideological and political division runs along a geographical line: western Ukraine versus eastern Ukraine."

There's also the risk a wayward Ukraine could damage relations between Moscow and the West. During the campaign, Russian President Vladimir Putin did not hide his sympathies: he visited Ukraine twice to broadcast his support for Yanukovych. Political consultants and media specialists close to the Kremlin played a major role in shaping both the strategy and the message of the Yanukovych campaign, and according to specialists like the Carnegie Endowment's Anders Aslund, Russia pumped hundreds of millions of dollars into his election bid. On Monday, Putin was the first world leader to congratulate the Prime Minister on his victory, a full two days before the Electoral Commission declared him President-elect. Sources well briefed on Kremlin affairs tell TIME that as protests in Kiev gathered momentum, Putin urged the much-discredited outgoing President Leonid Kuchma, eager to secure a safe retirement amid charges of corruption and political violence, to declare Yanukovych the winner. The sources say Putin made it clear that Moscow would not accept a Yushchenko victory. If the Russian President sticks to that hard line, it could provoke serious trouble, abroad and at home. "The Russians have raised the stakes," says Stephen Sestanovich of the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations. "They've made this a very emotional issue domestically and there will be a lot of people on Putin's nationalist flank saying, 'Are you going to take this lying down?'"

Yanukovich, 54, has made no secret of his pro-Moscow leanings. And Ukraine's business and political élite have flourished in one of the world's most corrupt economies; they trust that he won't rock the boat. If Yanukovych seems a throwback to the Soviet era, Yushchenko, 50, wants to bring Ukraine into the free-market age. In opposition, he turned Our Ukraine into a powerful antigovernment bloc that's threatening to undo the currently ruling clans' lock on power.

Almost before the final votes were tallied, international election monitors raised allegations of widescale fraud. According to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (osce), which sent in observers to watch the balloting, there were "highly suspicious and unrealistic" turnouts in key Yanukovych areas. Monitors recorded acts of harassment, intimidation and multiple voting, and noted that the list of the country's eligible voters mysteriously grew by 5% on election day. Senator Richard Lugar, who represented the U.S. at the vote, was scathing in his assessment: "A concerted and forceful program of election-day fraud and abuse was enacted with either the leadership or co-operation of governmental authorities." With each day of drama and denunciations, more and more Ukrainians poured into Independence Square to challenge the official outcome. The whole capital was, in the words of one Russian TV correspondent, "one big demonstration." Pro-Yushchenko youth organizers, some of them trained by the same dissidents who helped coordinate successful electoral revolutions in Serbia and Georgia, rallied volunteers with rock music, puppet shows and free food. Even Poland's famed Solidarity leader Lech Walesa made an appearance, telling the crowd: "I opposed the Soviet Union and I opposed communism and I came out victorious. Ukraine has a chance!" In fact, the institutions of power were already showing cracks. Olexandr Skibinetsky, a general in Ukraine's normally loyal state security service, told demonstrators that he shared their "well-founded doubts" about the election. Lieut. General Mikhail Kutsin, the military commander for western Ukraine, said his men would not "act against their own people." In other parts of the country, cities and towns created strike committees and announced campaigns of civil disobedience.

As the tumult in the streets escalated, Yanukovych seemed at a loss. At first, he tried to pretend nothing was wrong. Then he disappeared from view for 24 hours. Later he told a crowd of 6,000 miners and metal workers transported by bus and train to Kiev's Central station from the east: "I'll give it to you straight. A creeping coup is taking place. We must do everything possible to prevent this coup from happening." After Parliament called for a fresh vote, many felt that the coup had succeeded. "This is banditry," said Irina, 39, a waitress in a Kiev café. "I voted for Yanukovych. He was legally elected. They should have let him start working. I'm scared to think what will become of us now."

However the disputed election finally plays out, it has undermined the Bush Administration's cozy relations with Putin, at least behind the scenes. In his first term, Bush was willing to give Putin a free hand in what Russia calls the "near abroad," the states that spun off from the broken Soviet Union. At the same time, Bush has made encouraging democracy around the world a central pillar of his presidency. In Ukraine, those two policies clash mightily. Washington spent much of Ukraine's bitterly fought presidential campaign studiously avoiding confrontation with Putin, and stuck to that line in the early days after the vote. But at midweek, Secretary of State Colin Powell made clear Washington's support for Yushchenko, saying the U.S. was "deeply disturbed by the extensive and credible reports of fraud." The following day, at an E.U.-Russia summit in the Hague, Putin emphasized that the dispute should be settled without outside interference. No other country has a "moral right to push a major European state to mass disorder," he warned. The Kremlin regards countries like Ukraine, Moldova and Belarus as vital buffers between Russia and the West. Like Russian rulers for the past two centuries, Putin "equates security with well-defined 'zones of interest,'" says James Sherr, an Eastern Europe specialist at Oxford University. Those zones have shrunk in recent years as the Baltic states and Georgia turned sharply toward the West. Putin doesn't want to see the same thing happen in Ukraine. But analysts in the U.S. worry that Putin may have overplayed his hand. If he were seen to be encouraging the east in its secessionist plans, the protests could turn violent.

As the Ukraine Supreme Court weighs its decision this week, there will be lots of opportunities for Russia to stir up separatism. Whether that happens will depend on Putin's ability to reconcile traditional Russian interests and fears with the reality of modern Europe, says Michael Emerson of the Centre for European Policy in Brussels: "The more Putin pushes with his realpolitik, the more Ukrainians will want to go in the opposite direction." Those who want Ukraine to one day join the European Union watched last week's events with special interest. The country has been caught in a kind of Catch-22, says Andrew Wilson, a lecturer at University College London and author of The Ukrainians: Unexpected Nation. "Brussels has been reluctant to give an invitation until Ukraine internalizes European values in politics and business, and Ukraine has been unwilling or unable to reform until that invitation is given." The current crisis could prompt both sides to break the impasse. On Independence Square, Taras Kuchma, a physician from Drogobych in the west, sarcastically thanked Yanukovych and Putin for having achieved the impossible. "They finally forced the Ukrainians to unite to become a nation," he said. But that unity was not in evidence last week, and it may still turn out to be an impossible dream.

• PAUL QUINN-JUDGE | Moscow and YURI ZARAKHOVICH | Kiev
• Tens of thousands of Ukrainians take to the streets to protest a presidential vote marred by fraud. Their bitter political divisions could tear the country apart