OjNewsCom Service


Viktor Yanukovych, the opposition leader and former premier, has claimed victory in Ukraine's presidential election run-off.

Official results from the Central Election Commission put Yanukovych in the lead with 48.78 % over rival Yulia Tymoshenko's 45.56 % with nearly 80 per cent of the vote counted.

Yanukovych claimed victory on Sunday and said Tymoshenko should resign as prime minister.

Meanwhile, she said will contest the result.
"From this day, a new path opens up for Ukraine," Yanukovych declared, pledging to "take the country down the path of change".

But Tymoshenko said it was "too soon to draw any conclusions", refusing to concede defeat and urging supporters to fight for every ballot.

Earlier, Oleksander Turchynov, the first deputy prime minister and a close Tymoshenko ally, said Tymoshenko had won 46.8 per cent of the vote compared with 46 per cent for Yanukovych with 85 per cent of the ballots counted, according to a "parallel count" by her team at polling stations.

The election commission projected the turnout among Ukraine's 37 million voters at about 70 %, 3.2 % points higher than the January 17 first-round vote in which 18 candidates competed.


Early figures showed a heavier turnout in Yanukovych's strongholds in Ukraine's Russian-speaking east than in Tymoshenko's districts in the country's Ukrainian-speaking west.

Yanukovych's victory, if confirmed, would mark a remarkable comeback by the 59-year-old former prime minister who was disgraced in 2004 by the "Orange Revolution" mass street protests which Tymoshenko, 49, co-led.

Yanukovych's election that year in a poll deemed to have been rigged was quashed by a court and he lost a third round of voting to Viktor Yushchenko, the other leader of the Orange Revolution.

Picture caption : I will fight it out, says Yulia Tymoshenko, who was humbled by Yanukovych in the run-off.