Special report: Ukraine, Belarus and Russia. On the border and on the brink

A thrilling election in Ukraine, a sad referendum in Belarus, and what they mean for Russia and the West

"TAKE at look at me,” says Victor Yushchenko, when asked about the mysterious illness that almost killed him last month - an illness, he believes, brought on by deliberate poisoning. His eyes peer out from a bloated, pock-marked, barely recognisable face. “I am absolutely convinced”, Mr Yushchenko says, “that I managed to survive an assassination attempt on my life.”

Damaged as he is, Mr Yushchenko may yet become Ukraine's next president. He has returned to the campaign trail ahead of the first round of voting on October 31st, exhilarating thousands of Ukrainians at mass rallies with his promises to fight corruption and uphold the rule of law. Their fervour, and the determination of Mr Yushchenko's opponents, are understandable. For the first time in Ukraine, real democracy is close enough to touch.

Since 1991, when Boris Yeltsin and the leaders of the two most “russified” Soviet republics, Ukraine and Belarus, together dissolved the Soviet Union, each of their countries has disappointed those who expected democracy to flourish in the rubble of communism. Belarus - squeezed, like Ukraine, between an expanded European Union and Russia - has for ten years been governed by Alexander Lukashenka, a capricious autocrat. After Mr Lukashenka's “victory” in a rigged referendum on October 17th, Belarus may have to endure another ten years of him, or more. Russia has experienced the volatility of Mr Yeltsin, and now the crescent authoritarianism of Vladimir Putin. Ukraine, meanwhile, has had ten years of corruption under Leonid Kuchma, its current president. If it now manages to stage fair presidential elections, the repercussions could spill across its eastern and northern borders.

Meet the candidates

According to Mr Yushchenko's supporters, and those of Victor Yanukovich, his main rival, Ukraine faces a choice of Manichean simplicity and dreadful consequence. Mr Yushchenko's team portrays him as an economic reformer, who, during a brief stint as prime minister in 1999-01, managed to reverse his country's economic decline, which had been even more precipitous than that of most other ex-Soviet states. Ukraine's economy suffered from many of the same ailments as Russia's: corruption, suffocating bureaucracy, unreliable courts and capital flight. Salaries and pensions were paid late; the population and life expectancy declined; villages emptied as young people went west to find work. Away from the glamour of downtown Kiev, much of the country is still painfully poor, and its middle class is small. But, so the story goes, Mr Yushchenko laid the foundations for the growth, and more reliable social security, of the past four years.

More than that, Mr Yushchenko presents himself as the champion of transparency and the rule of law, and the nemesis of corruption - which, under Mr Kuchma, has become brazen even by Russian standards. For example, Mr Yushchenko says he will review the privatisation of a steelworks that was sold earlier this year at half its market value to the country's two richest men, one of whom, Victor Pinchuk, is Mr Kuchma's son-in-law.

According to Mr Yushchenko's team, Mr Yanukovich, who is the current prime minister - the 11th since independence - is a creature of the corrupt current administration and of the oligarchs. Mr Yanukovich's two criminal convictions, rumours of other malfeasance and his occasional, infelicitous use of prison slang do not burnish his image. But, says Serhiy Tihipko, chairman of Mr Yanukovich's campaign, “There are actions, and there is talk.” Mr Tihipko points to the introduction, during his candidate's premiership, of a flat income-tax rate of 13%, which has helped to draw previously untaxed incomes into the legal economy. Pensions and other social benefits have risen (though how affordably remains to be seen). A privatisation review, says Mr Tihipko, would not be in the national interest.

During the campaign, Mr Yanukovich has appealed to the Russian-speaking population of east Ukraine by proposing to make Russian the second official language and to introduce dual Ukrainian-Russian nationality. This has helped to create an impression that, as president, he would be even more Moscow-friendly than Mr Kuchma has been. But Mr Tihipko insists that Mr Yanukovich's foreign policy would be “pragmatic”. Meanwhile, Mr Yushchenko's opponents characterise him as an extreme nationalist, intent on favouring the Ukrainian-speaking west of the country. Anti-Yushchenko propaganda also portrays him as an American stooge (“Bushchenko”) - an odd slur, given his pledge to bring home Ukraine's peacekeeping contingent in Iraq.

Milking two cows

But the choice, and its consequences, are not quite that stark. Some, such as Olexandr Moroz, a socialist leader who is also running for president, criticise Mr Yushchenko for failing to take a stern line with Mr Kuchma over the alleged government murder of a journalist in 2000. That casts doubt on the boldness of his leadership. A few shady characters lurk round him, too.

Then there is the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine's fractious, juvenile parliament, which would prevent both candidates doing some of the things they are promising. Whereas those Russian oligarchs who are not either in jail or in exile now tend to keep tactfully shtum about the government, in Ukraine many of the oligarchs are in parliament (which, among other advantages, provides them with immunity). Parties are born and die, marry and divorce, with such frequency that any president will find sustained reform difficult.

And Ukraine's links with Russia - cultural, religious, historical and linguistic - are too profound to be casually severed. If Mr Yushchenko wins, the United States and the European Union will be friendlier towards his country; so too, probably, will western investors. But good will has its limits, and EU membership will remain a distant prospect for Ukraine whoever is its president. Given its handy location on the Black Sea and close to the unstable Caucasus, NATO membership may be more attainable. For his part, as Hryhoriy Nemyria, of Kiev's Centre for European and International Studies, puts it, Mr Yanukovich would probably “continue a strategy of milking two cows”: cosying up to Moscow, without disavowing the long-term goal of European integration.

All the same, a win for Mr Yushchenko would be a symbolic vote for change, however thwarted and incremental. That is enough to worry Russia, which has more or less openly supported Mr Yanukovich. Mr Putin received the prime minister, along with Mr Kuchma, in Moscow earlier this month. He is also visiting Ukraine just before the election, ostensibly to observe a parade commemorating Kiev's liberation from the Nazis. His trip has included a television appearance, in which he praised Mr Yanukovich's economic record and promised closer links.

Why is Mr Putin so exercised? Partly because of Russia's business interests in Ukraine; partly because of Russia's naval base in the Crimea, and worries about what might happen to it if Ukraine really did join NATO. But mainly because of post-Soviet neuroses that can seem just as murky as the labyrinthine cross-border energy deals that have lined the pockets of both Russian and Ukrainian officials.

Many Russians feel humiliated by the diminution of the country's stature since the Soviet Union's collapse, especially by the West's intrusions into, and influence over, the ex-Soviet nations of central Asia, as well as the Baltics. On Mr Putin's watch, the Russian “sphere of influence” has already shrunk with the “loss” of Georgia. This sense of grievance helps to explain Russia's illogical support for tin-pot separatist regimes in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, two breakaway regions of Georgia, and the last vestiges of its territorial empire that Russia has yet to fully relinquish.

For Russia's derzhavniki (great-power nationalists), loss of influence over Ukraine - so close at hand, with its large ethnic Russian population and its Slavic heritage - would mean that Russia had forfeited all claim to greatness. As one senior western diplomat in Kiev bluntly puts it, “You don't have a Russian empire with a democratic Ukraine.” For such Russians, western talk about the virtues of democracy is just a cover for the real goal: to push Europe's border eastwards yet again.

Will Mr Putin get his man, and his way? Given the dubiousness of Ukrainian opinion polls, the reluctance of many voters to admit their true intentions and the large number of undecideds, it is hard to say. Almost certainly, the two Victors will advance to a second-round run-off, which is scheduled for November 21st. The outcome of that would largely depend on how the votes cast for other candidates are redistributed, in particular those for the communist and for Mr Moroz, the socialist. Mr Moroz says that, should he not make it to the run-off himself, he will definitely not support Mr Yanukovich - but he may not support Mr Yushchenko, either.

A mystery plague and a curious egg

All this assumes, however, that the election will be decided by a fair count. In a campaign already notorious for the alleged poisoning of the main candidate, this looks optimistic. Whatever the cause of his horrible disfigurement - his exotic diet, say his opponents - the blight cost Mr Yushchenko several weeks of on-the-ground campaigning. That was a particularly cruel blow to him, since almost all Ukraine's television stations are controlled either by the state - by Viktor Medvedchuk, the head of the current presidential administration - or by Mr Pinchuk, and their coverage is skewed in favour of Mr Yanukovich. Meanwhile, a television station largely owned by Petro Poroshenko, one of Mr Yushchenko's closest aides, has been harassed.

After the “poisoning”, there followed a bizarre incident in the western town of Ivano-Frankivsk, in which Mr Yanukovich, who is not a small man, was struck by an egg and crumpled to the ground as if pole-axed. The rumour is that he was expecting a staged assassination attempt, which a teenage egg-thrower pre-empted. Other shenanigans have been less comic: bombs have allegedly been planted in the offices of a pro-democracy student movement (“terrorists”, say the authorities). State employees have been bullied to support Mr Yanukovich. Opposition meetings have been disrupted.

Mr Yushchenko maintains that plans for large-scale falsification of the vote are already in train, and that they involve, among other things, stitched-up local electoral commissions, thousands of “dead souls” (deceased voters who have not been removed from the ballots), and fraud at the polling stations that have been set up for Ukrainians in Russia.

But any sort of peaceful transfer of power would be preferable to the still more sinister possibilities he and others are anticipating. The parade in Kiev, which is taking place nine days before the actual date of the city's liberation, is thought by some to be a pretext for bringing large military units to the capital. Bus-loads of criminals and miners from eastern Ukraine are also said to be en route to create havoc in Kiev - and thus justify the annulment of the elections or the declaration of a state of emergency by Mr Kuchma.

According to this view, Mr Medvedchuk and his oligarchic friends do not trust Mr Yanukovich, who is backed by a rival oligarchic clan. They will thus find a way for Mr Kuchma to remain in power, install a more pliant replacement, or perhaps dilute the powers of the presidency through constitutional reform. “For this kind of people”, claims Mr Poroshenko, “this is a war, not a competition.” Mr Yanukovich's supporters, meanwhile, allege that the opposition is planning a “chestnut revolution” (named for the trees that line Kiev's main drag), along the lines of the “rose revolution” in Georgia last year. They also say that it will not succeed: “Ukraine is not Georgia,” says Mr Tihipko, firmly.

He is probably right. History has inculcated a certain resigned patience among Ukrainians. Like the other lands between the Baltic and the Black Sea, Ukraine has suffered 700 years of invasion and conquest, from the Mongols to the Nazis. Parts of western Ukraine were incorporated into its territory only in 1945; the Crimea was added in 1954. Until 1991, it had never been an independent state.

Sitting on the nail

The history of Belarus, to the north, has been if anything still more traumatic, and its political culture is still more quietist. In a joke Belarussians tell about themselves, a Russian, a Ukrainian and a Belarussian catch a train together, only to find nails sticking up from their allotted seats. The Russian throws the nail out of the window. The Ukrainian pulls it out and takes it home. The Belarussian assumes that it must be there for a reason, and so sits on it placidly. After centuries of domination by either the Lithuanians, Poles or Russians, ruination during the second world war and decimation by Stalin, the nail Belarus has been sitting on since 1994 is Alexander Lukashenka.

Mr Lukashenka's rigged referendum on October 17th gave him the right to change his country's constitution and stand for a third presidential term in 2006. He has already extended his tenure once, and neutered and suborned Belarus's parliament. It is hard, in fact, to see why he bothers with elections. Like Mr Kuchma, Mr Lukashenka has reason to worry about his future, and his freedom, should he ever step down; unlike Mr Kuchma, who could have stood for president again but hasn't, Mr Lukashenka is unlikely to go voluntarily.

Yet the opposition in Belarus commands nothing like the support that Mr Yushchenko can muster in Ukraine. A pre-referendum rally in Minsk, the capital, was attended by only a few hundred people. A few brave students waved the nationalist flag of Belarus that Mr Lukashenka has replaced with a Soviet-era one. Slightly bigger protests held in Minsk after the referendum were brutally broken up by the police. Anatoly Lebedko, an opposition leader, was beaten unconscious.

That sort of treatment helps to explain why Belarussians prefer grumbling in their kitchens to demonstrating on the streets. Human-rights groups and independent newspapers are routinely closed down and persecuted by the tax authorities (which are also deployed against political troublemakers in Ukraine). Recently, even a university was closed. Fear of being sacked is also a powerful deterrent to protest, since the Soviet-style economy offers few alternatives to working for a state-owned enterprise.

But the uncomfortable truth for Mr Lukashenka's western critics is that, though not so popular as his phoney referendum result suggests, he is still well-liked. Away from Minsk, with its daunting monumentalist architecture and preternaturally clean streets, Belarus is a poor country. But Mr Lukashenka has seen to it that state salaries and the pensions of rural babushkas are paid on time, even managing modest increases. Mr Lebedko hopesthat silent legions of the president's critics will one day realise they are not alone; but he may wait in vain.

Lessons from Lukashenka

Belarus is a smaller and less pivotal country than Ukraine. The human-rights situation there is grim, though not as bad as that in some other countries of the world. Yet for two reasons, the West cannot ignore the antics of its tragicomic president.

The first is that Mr Lukashenka's Belarus is also part of Russia's buffer against western encroachment. The prospect of a full union between Belarus and Russia has receded, as relations have soured between Mr Lukashenka and Mr Putin. Mr Lukashenka's shameless abuses and anti-western rants are embarrassing. But, for Mr Putin, Mr Lukashenka is a useful idiot, if an exasperating one, and Russia continues to subsidise him with cheap energy sales.

The more important reason is the influence that little Belarus could be exerting on mighty Russia. Liberals in Ukraine fear that if Mr Yushchenko loses the election, their country will increasingly resemble Mr Putin's Russia. Liberals in Russia, meanwhile, fear that, under Mr Putin, their country will increasingly resemble Mr Lukashenka's Belarus. Witness, so the argument runs, Mr Putin's plan to appoint regional governors and his moves to recover the state's control over the economy and subdue the oligarchs (a class that has not prospered in Belarus). Rumours are also swirling in Moscow that Mr Putin may try to emulate Mr Lukashenka and, one way or another, stay in power beyond his second presidential term(though in his television appearance this week, Mr Putin hinted that he wouldn't).

Therein lies the other reason why the symbolism of Ukraine's election is so important: its outcome will help to define not just the borders of the shadow Russian empire, but will help to shape the prospects for democracy within Russia itself. A legitimate election, says that senior western diplomat in Kiev, will have a “very positive impact on all of its neighbours - including the big guy - in terms of democratic development”. A properly democratic Ukraine would offer Russia a different model to emulate.

Mr Yushchenko rightly wants the international election observers who are pouring into Ukraine not to be “deaf and dumb” about electoral violations, and says that “the entire world should demonstrate its solidarity” by refusing to recognise an illegitimate president, should one be installed. So they should. But even if that happens this time, Ukraine is too lively, too European, not to get its democracy sooner or later. Russia, on the other hand, is a different story.

A thrilling election in Ukraine, a sad referendum in Belarus, and what they mean for Russia and the West.