Ukraine decides: Still waiting for Yuliya

Yuliya Tymoshenko is not giving up, but she is not storming the barricades either. She has made no major speech in public, but several papers have reported her saying she will never accept Yanukovych's victory, and that she is preparing a legal challenge to the vote.

What isn't clear is what the nature of any legal case will be - which doesn't help unpick what she might or might not be up to. Some have talked of demanding a total recount; some of rerunning the vote as a ‘third round', as in 2004. One Tymoshenko MP, Andriy Shkil, has said that what is "under question is the validity of votes at over 1,000 polling stations," which implies a partial check or recount.

But the detailed figures on the regional breakdown of the vote now available from the Central Election Commission (www.cvk.gov.ua) show that the election was predictably polarised, as Ukrainian elections nearly always are, but not as polarised as in 2004. Compared to the vote for her party in the parliamentary elections in 2007, Tymoshenko's vote was up in some parts of the south-east, where Yanukovych's party controls the local levers of power. In Crimea she won 17.3%, compared to 6.9% in 2007. So any legal case will have to be highly specific.

Incidentally, one exit poll showed that Serhiy Tihipko would have won easily if he had won thorough to the second round, beating Tymoshenko by 43% to 27% and Yanukovych by 43% to 32%

Things are shifting in parliament, where they could be an attempt to unseat Tymoshenko as PM even before the official result is announced. The Party of Regions is hinting it has the necessary partners to form a new coalition. The two small parties (the Communists and Lytvyn Block) can probably be taken for granted. Tymoshenko's own party is presumably not keen, though plenty of businessmen within it will jump ship soon enough if Yanukovych becomes president. This gives the whip hand to Our Ukraine, which used to be the party of President Yushchenko - despite his disastrous vote in the elections - but has now split into many factions. Yushchenko could well have achieved his final ambition and stopped Tymoshenko winning the presidency, though whether the history books will remember him kindly for this is an open

Andrew has been blogging throughout the Ukrainian elections. Catch the most recent update here

Listen to his special podcast interview with two eminent Ukrainians, Olexiy Haran and Mykola Ryabchuk, here 

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