Orange Revolution 'villain' seeks last laugh in Ukraine

Viktor Yanukovich is on course to win Ukraine's presidency, exit polls showed late yesterday, in what would be a remarkable comeback for the ex-convict depicted in the West as the villain of the 2004 Orange Revolution.

Mr Yanukovich, who according to exit polls was the winner of yesterday's presidential election, rode a wave of discontent with Ukraine's pro-Western leaders after they failed to fulfil the dreams of the Orange uprising.

In November 2004, the barrel-chested Yanukovich appeared set to become the leader of this ex-Soviet country when he was declared the winner of a presidential election where he had campaigned with strong backing from Russia.

But tens of thousands poured into the streets to protest vote-rigging and Kremlin meddling. The courts threw out Mr Yanukovich's victory and ordered a new vote, which he lost to President Viktor Yushchenko.

After such a debacle, many politicians would have retreated to the shadows. But not Mr Yanukovich, 59, whose image is built on how he overcame a childhood of crippling misery to become one of his country's top figures.

Over the past month he trounced his Orange foes one by one, with Mr Yushchenko eliminated in a first-round election in January and with another main rival, Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, predicted to be defeated in yesterday's run-off.

Orphaned at age two, Mr Yanukovich was born in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine, an industrial and largely Russian-speaking area of smokestacks and slag heaps that remains his stronghold.

He has related how he ran around the streets bare-footed as he was brought up in abject poverty by his grandmother.

In the late 1960s under the Soviet Union he even fell in with a local street gang and was convicted of robbery in 1967 and assault in 1970, serving time in prison on both occasions.

But he then worked for two decades as a transport manager in Donetsk before moving into politics in the late 1990s, becoming the region's governor in 1997 and rising to Prime Minister under President Leonid Kuchma in 2002.

His court convictions, still a matter of intense debate in Ukraine, were erased in December 1978.

In building his Regions Party into a major political force, he enjoyed the financial support of one of Ukraine's richest men, metals and mining magnate Rinat Akhmetov, who also owns 2009 UEFA Cup winner Shakhtar Donetsk.

After the Orange Revolution, Mr Yanukovich moved to sharpen his image and to soften his pro-Russia rhetoric with help from US image-makers.

He will never be known as a great speaker and his verbal fumbles in both Russian and his somewhat halting Ukrainian are the object of amusement amongst Ukrainians.