Ukraine campaign

The time between the general election and the run-off was supposed to be an agitation-free period, from what I understood, but even being in the country for less than 72 hours we noticed several instances in which that was not the case. Predictably, each candidate appeared to still be using those avenues open to him. Yanukovich's people (presumably) were behind a series of TV ads which we saw repeatedly, which, without naming either candidate, had what appeared to be the Ukrainian equivalents of Joe and Jane Sixpack (Bohdan Horylka and Oleksandra Salo?) - a war veteran and a milkmaid, for example - talking about the direction they wanted to see the country go in, with the tag line, "А ты за що?" ("What do you support?"). The slant was anti-Yushchenko.

Yushchenko's campaign may or may not have been behind a concert/rally which we saw on Independence Square Saturday night, but they were almost certainly behind the dozens of campaign books piled (for free access, apparently) on one of the windowsills at Boryspil airport - I grabbed one on the way out:



The cover identifies Yushchenko as the "leader of the nascent Ukrainian political nation."

And they were probably also behind this slightly more opposition-like sticker:



I peeled this off a curbstone next to Bulgakov's house-museum on Andreevsky Uzviz. The large text reads, "Election 2004 / Are you ready to go to Chechnya?" And the bottom line is a Yanukovich quote: "Dual citizenship [with Russia] is just a matter of time."

We felt like natural Yushchenko supporters (politics aside) because of Lorina's orange scarf, although it only elicited one comment (from a friendly flower vendor on Independence Square).