Press

Ukraine Decides: Second round of elections - 7 February. ECFR expert available for interviews and analysis

Press advisory

On Sunday 7 February Yuliya Tymoshenko and Viktor Yanukovych go head to head in the second round of Ukraine's first presidential election since 2004's Orange Revolution.

ECFR's Andrew Wilson is available for interviews and comment.

For all press enquiries, Andrew Wilson can be reached at:

• Telephone: +44 (0) 7920 421066
• Email: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

Tymoshenko and Yanukovych seem to offer Ukrainians a stark choice: they were poles apart in the Orange Revolution, with Tymoshenko as the liberal face of the revolution and Yanukovych as Russia's Trojan horse.

But Andrew Wilson believes the candidates are more alike this time, with both drifting towards the centre and competing for the favours of Moscow and Brussels.

Wilson says:

• The result will be close. Tymoshenko will rally until the end to unite the 'Orange' vote, but this might not be enough to close Yanukovych's 10% first round lead.
• Neither candidate will take defeat lying down. A disputed result is possible once again, but this time protesting crowds will made up of paid demonstrators or party members from the losing side.
• Having these two candidates in the run-off is a sign of how much the Orange Revolution has lost its way. It also illuminates the extent to which Europe's influence over its neighbours has declined, to the benefit of Moscow.
• The 40% of Ukrainians who voted for other candidates in the first round on 17 January hold the key to the final result. There is a growing movement to turn up but to tick the box marked vote 'against all'.

For more, go to Andrew Wilson's blog on Ukraine - Ukraine Decides - on our website.

Background:

• The first round of voting took place on 17 January. Yanukovych got 35.3% of the vote, and Tymoshenko 25%.
• Because no candidate won more than 50% of the vote in the first round, a second round of voting between the two front runners - Tymoshenko and Yanukovych - is taking place on Sunday 7 February.
• The current president, Viktor Yushchenko, who was poisoned before the 2004 elections before being carried to power by the Orange Revolution, fell well behind in the first round with only 5.5% of the vote.

For any further information, please contact ECFR's press office at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) or on +44 (0) 20 7031 1623.

Andrew Wilson co-authored The limits of enlargement-lite: European and Russian power in the troubled neighbourhood (published by ECFR) which argued that the EU urgently needs to rethink its approach to the eastern neighbourhood - including Ukraine - or face a ring of failing states. He is also the author of the books The Ukrainians and Ukraine's Orange Revolution.