Reports of Scattered Violence as Ukrainians Vote :: Charter'97 :: News

Voters across Ukraine returned to the polls today in the run-off presidential election between two candidates who virtually tied in the first round of voting last month, and who represent two very different courses for a nation bridging Russia and the West.

Polls closed tonight at 8 o`clock after a mostly calm day in the capital, but with reports of scattered violence in outlying regions. Supporters for both candidates contended that voting had been marked by ballot stuffing, falsification and efforts to intimidate and disenfranchise voters at the polls. Initial reports said turnout was high.

A tense night of counting ballots began, with supporters for the opposition candidate, Viktor A. Yushchenko, crowding Independence Square, near the capital`s center, as they waited in the darkness for preliminary results.

Mr. Yushchenko won the first round of voting on Oct. 31 by the narrowest of margins, receiving 39.87 percent of the ballots against 39.32 percent for the state-supported candidate, Prime Minister Viktor F. Yanukovich, in a race with 24 candidates.

The run-off today was set to determine the winner, who will serve a five-year term and replace the outgoing president, Leonid D. Kuchma.

Mr. Kuchma has led the country for 10 years. His administration has been characterized by centralized control and accusations of corruption, illegal arms trading and state support for political violence. After often rocky relations with the West, he managed to warm relations with the Bush administration by deploying Ukrainian troops in support of the American-led war in Iraq.

Now, with his days in office winding down, the fierce clash between his hand-picked successor and Mr. Yushchenko has taken the shape of both a referendum on his rule and a decision about a central question of the nation`s course - whether it should orient more to the east, toward Moscow, or westward toward NATO and the European Union.

Underscoring the importance of the question to the region`s strategic tilt, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has openly supported Mr. Yanukovich.

The prime minister`s campaign headquarters assumed a confident posture tonight, saying that its staff had worked to improve voter turnout in eastern Ukraine, Mr. Yanukovich`s territory, and to challenge what he described as illegal voters in the west.

"I should say we have succeeded in that," said Gennady P. Korz, a senior campaign spokesman.

He also accused the opposition of resorting to bomb threats at polling places to keep people away from voting in areas supporting the prime minister, and said the opposition was behind the death of a police captain who was killed at a polling place in central Ukraine.

Supporters for Mr. Yushchenko, and the staff at his campaign headquarters, said they had been victimized by violence and threats in at least two regions, and that their efforts to block Mr. Kuchma`s will were being undermined by widespread organized fraud.

They said, for instance, that voters from eastern Ukraine, a region that tilts toward Moscow, were being mustered and moved about the country to vote at least twice - once early in the day in their home districts, and then, after organized bus rides to Kiev, in polling places here.

"We see with our own eyes how they drive around from place to place, and they have a special certificate not to vote in their own district," said Petr I. Modsko, 78, a retired Army artillery officer.

As the opposition staff claimed, concentrations of Mr. Yanukovich` supporters from the outlying regions were visible in the capital. Four densely packed buses of his supporters were parked under police guard under a national monument near the city`s center, and a man who the group identified only as "their competent authority" said he had come with them from Lugonsk to vote in Kiev.

He also warned, rather darkly, that the groups - which consisted mostly of rough-looking young men who glared from the buses - had come to Kiev on election day "to maintain order."

"We do not want a revolution," he said. He declined to give his name.

Mr. Yushchenko`s campaign headquarters also said it had received reports of ballot stuffing, and that in regions where Mr. Yushchenko drew his support, state-controlled election commission employees had played a bizarre dirty trick - providing supporters of the opposition with pens filled with ink that became invisible not long after use. They predicted that many ballots would be invalidated because as a result they would appear blank.

Although many international observers, from a variety of missions, were present for the run-off, supporters for Mr. Yushchenko said they had little confidence in their ability to catch what they described as many ways of cheating.

"The observers will never be able to sort out how they rig it up," said Zoya V. Vorobyola, 78, as she stood in Independence Square in the afternoon.