Eastern Ukraine - Ukraine - page 456

One major scandal surrounded the mysterious beheading of campaigning opposition
journalist Georgiy Gongadze in 2000. Kuchma was widely rumoured to have ordered the
killing. Although this was never proved, Gongadze became a posthumous cause célèbre .
The last working reactor at Chornobyl, No 3, was finally shut down in 2000.
Orest Subtelny's 700-page Ukraine, A History is widely considered the definitive work on
the subject, narrowly edging out Paul Magosci's equally long History of Ukraine . Both
have been updated to cover the Orange Revolution. However, the most readable ac-
count of Ukraine's history is Anna Reid's Borderland, which neatly divides events into di-
gestible chunks.
The Orange Revolution
Former central banker Viktor Yushchenko had proved too reformist and pro-European
for his masters when he was Leonid Kuchma's prime minister from 1998 to 2001.
However, in 2004 as Kuchma prepared to stand down, Yushchenko re-emerged as a
strong presidential contender.
Kuchma's anointed successor, the Kremlin-friendly Viktor Yanukovych, had expected
an easy victory and the popularity of Yushchenko's Nasha Ukraina (Our Ukraine) party
looked threatening. During an increasingly bitter campaign, and seven weeks before the
scheduled 31 October election, Yushchenko underwent a remarkable physical transform-
ation - disfiguration that Austrian doctors later confirmed was the result of dioxin pois-
oning.
After an inconclusive first round, a second vote was held on 21 November. A day
later, contrary to the exit polls and amid widespread claims of vote rigging by overseas
electoral observers, Yanukovych was declared the winner.
Over the next few days and weeks Yushchenko supporters staged a show of people
power unlike any Ukraine had ever seen. Despite freezing temperatures they took to the
streets, brandishing banners and clothes in the opposition's trademark orange. They as-
sembled to listen to Yushchenko and his powerful political ally Yulia Tymoshenko at
mass rallies in Kyiv's maydan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Sq). They surrounded par-
liament and established a demonstrators' tent city along Kyiv's main Khreshchatyk
boulevard to keep up pressure on the authorities.
The Yanukovych camp refused to respond to a parliamentary vote of no confidence in
the election result and his eastern Ukrainian supporters threatened to secede if Yushchen-
ko was declared president. Despite this, on 3 December the Supreme Court annulled the
first election result, and the way was paved for a second poll on 26 December, which