AP News, September 28th, 2007
His aides have worked long and hard to soften the image of Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych and cast him as a moderate. But the burly 57-year-old former electrician and metal worker keeps straying off message.
During the campaign for Sunday's parliamentary elections, Yanukovych used a barnyard epithet to describe his country's politics, and called his main female opponent a "cow on ice."
But his supporters love him in spite of _ or perhaps because of _ these outbursts, and he could keep his job in a vote seen likely to split among three parties and leave Ukraine with a coalition government.
The square-jawed politician was widely seen as the villain of the 2004 Orange Revolution _ the Kremlin's man in a country still haunted by its Soviet past. He won a presidential election, but hundreds of thousands people jammed Kiev's streets for weeks to protest electoral fraud. A court later ruled the vote was rigged, and ordered a revote, which was won by his Western-leaning foe, Viktor Yushchenko.
But instead of vanishing from the scene, grim, tough-talking Yanukovych returned as a premier last year, capitalizing on the widespread disillusionment with Yushchenko's failure to make good on his promises of reform. He has sought to cast himself as a smiling, conciliatory man who praises democracy, courts the West and is now the most popular politician in the nation of 47 million.
On occasion, though, Yanukovych's discipline slips and the bare-knuckles politician emerges.
At a rally in the southern city of Izmail, he bashed his main political opponent, Yulia Tymoshenko, a former prime minister and ice-skating enthusiast whose hallmark is her strikingly braided blond hair.
"As a healthy man I feel normal about her, she's a normal woman, but as a prime minister she is a cow on ice," Yanukovych said to a roar of approval.
"I feel sorry for such a politician and the people who emit such aggression," Tymoshenko shot back. "I wouldn't want anybody to call Yanukovych's wife a cow on ice."
At the Izmail rally, admirers stretched out their arms for a handshake, many in tears as they clutched his portrait and chanted his name. "How many beautiful women there are here," Yanukovych said, to more cheers.
"He is a simple man, he is one of us," said Aloyona Ramaliyskaya, 38, who came with two of her four daughters. "He does whatever he promises."
During Yanukovych's year in power, the economy has grown by some 7 percent, he has raised wages and pensions, and he has sought to improve ties with Russia.
At the same time, Ukraine's language divide, a big factor in the Orange Revolution, is less acutely felt in this election campaign, and Yanukovych, a native Russian speaker, has brushed up on his Ukrainian.
Yanukovych draws most of his support from the Russian-speaking east and south, where voters favor close ties with Russia, in contrast to the Ukrainian-speaking center and west which wants quick integration into the European Union and NATO.
"He is close with Russia and we want to be with Russia, not with America," said Ivan Shpakov, 71, a retired train mechanic in Izmail. "He is a good person, he treats people well, like a simple person. He talks honestly."
Three years ago Yanukovych was mocked by his opponents as a Kremlin stooge. Today, he has softened his stance and calls for partnership both with Russia and Europe. He still doesn't want to join NATO and still pushes for Russian to be a state language along with Ukrainian, but now says he'll leave such decisions to a referendum.
He emphasizes his working-class roots and calls himself "a provincial politician," unlike his opponents. "I wasn't taught to lie like they do, to talk beautifully like they do."
Yanukovych has learned to woo the media, inviting journalists into his house and openly talking for the first time about serving jail time for robbery and assault as a young man. Both convictions were overturned and his record wiped clean.
Experts credit him with bringing a sense of stability to the economy. But the average monthly wage is still a meager of $258 and many Ukrainians complain that prices are rising as fast as incomes.
Analysts fault Yanukovych for failing to reform the legal and tax systems, and the sale of several government-owned industries to private investors during his premiership were widely denounced as rigged. This month, one of the country's largest electricity producers, Dniproenergo, was sold to Yanukovych's chief financial backer, the tycoon Rinat Akhmetov.
Taras Kuzio, a researcher at the Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies at George Washington University, said Yanukovych's Party of Regions has altered its image but not its basic agenda _ serving the interests of powerful industrialists. The party, he says, "cannot change."
