Vladimir Litwin does not tend to exaggerate. He is a man of compromise, which is made all the more apparent by the fact that he has already served for two years as the chairman of the hopelessly divided parliament in Kiev.

Even before the Ukrainians elect their next president on Sunday, Litwin has already formed his opinion about the campaign. He believes that the hotly contested election has "humiliated" the country. When he reads what is being written about Ukraine, Litwin says, he feels "ashamed for our country."

Did something really happen in the past few months, somewhere between Lvov, Kiev and Donetsk, that goes well beyond the usual scope of voter manipulation in countries like Russia, Belarus and the Ukraine?

It isn't especially surprising that the regime of outgoing president Leonid Kuchma is trying to eliminate opposition leader Victor Yushchenko. After all, for months polls showed that the 50-year-old banker was well ahead of Prime Minister Victor Yanukovich, the hand-picked candidate of the party currently in power.

Last week, Yushchenko's plane was refused permission to land in the provincial capital of Cherson, and later in Kiev, simply because a broken-down fire truck was supposedly blocking the runway below. The candidate was forced to land in the remote city of Lvov, and his planned campaign rallies had to be cancelled. Bad news for a politician who has been barred from appearing on television, and whose only hope of connecting with voters is through direct contact.

In the country's universities, additional classes are being scheduled so that no one can attend the student rallies scheduled by Yushchenko, and the secret police are searching the apartments of members of the opposition. When the opposition party called for a demonstration in Kiev last Saturday, all train tickets to the capital were suddenly sold out. Ukrainians have almost become accustomed to these kinds of obstructions, as unappetizing as they are from a Western point of view.

But a great deal will be at stake in Kiev next Sunday, a lot more than in current elections in Moscow and Minsk. At this election, Ukrainians will be voting on whether, 13 years after the country gained independence, a pro-Western member of the opposition party will assume the presidency for the first time. The election on Oct. 13 is a crucial one.

Was Yushchenko poisoned?

This is the only reasonable explanation for an incident that has catapulted the campaign to unheard-of levels: It appears that someone has tried to poison opposition party candidate Yushchenko.

The debacle began on Sept. 5, after a joint dinner with the head of the Ukrainian national security agency, Igor Smeshko. The country's highest-ranking policeman had asked to meet with Yushchenko to deliver "eminently important information."

Shortly after the dinner, the opposition leader began to experience strange symptoms: facial paralysis, back pain and constant vomiting. After some initial hesitation, Yushchenko allowed himself to be flown to the Rudolfinerhaus in Vienna, a private hospital that had once helped his wife Katharine during the delivery of one of their five children.

The doctors diagnosed inflammation in the stomach and small intestine, the pancreas and the ear, as well as swelling of the liver and paralysis of a facial nerve. In cautiously worded statements, they mentioned that Yushchenko's symptoms did not match anything "known to civil medicine."

The politician returned to Kiev, emaciated, his face swollen and having trouble speaking. Socialist party leader Alexander Moros, claiming that the whole affair was nothing but a campaign trick, mockingly said that Yushchenko should have nursed himself back to health with "bacon and potatoes." He was referring to the popular recipe for treating alcohol poisoning.

But ever since Yushchenko was readmitted to the Rudolfinerhaus hospital in early October for severe pain, and after a lawsuit was brought in Kiev for "attacking a public figure" and the Viennese doctors reported the incident to the American poison control center, even political opponents believe that there could be something to the theory that Yushchenko may have been poisoned with a not-easily detectable substance.

"Yushchenko was a healthy man; he and I skied down the world championship runs at Madonna de Campiglio," claimed Jevgen Chervonenko, Yushchenko's friend and a member of the Rada (parliament), in an interview with DER SPIEGEL last week. "The only reason he survived is that we didn't wait another day to fly him to Vienna."

A broken man running for office

These days, Yushchenko's supporters' eyes fill with tears when their hero, a man whose health has clearly suffered, throws himself back into the campaign. They are moved when he tells them that they are the ones who will "decide the fate of this country, never the rulers from the United Social Democratic Party" -- presumably an allusion to the person he suspects was behind the alleged poisoning: the powerful chief of the presidential administration, Victor Medvedchuk. Of course, such allegations are impossible to prove.

But his opponents have long since moved in for the kill. They conduct surveys in which they imply that Yushchenko is chronically ill, which would make him a security risk as president. In their newspapers, they spread the rumor that the opposition is planning a massive uprising in the event that their candidate loses the election, no less than a "virtual coup d'etat," and that its members are practically looking forward to this outcome. Widely distributed "secret plans," according to which the election results could be declared invalid on Nov. 1, are designed to disseminate the belief that the opposition party will bring nothing but uncertainty. "We don't need a revolution," the president's office claims, "we are for peace." Yushchenko's lead has melted away.

Kuchma's friend, Russian president Vladimir Putin, another expert in the practice of controlling democracy, is also playing the administration's game. He recently had 650 additional polling places set up for Ukrainian guest workers (almost six times as many as in all other countries combined), where there will be no election observers from the opposition party. The respected newspaper Serkalo nedeli described the action as a "large-scale manipulation."

Then Putin invited Yushchenko's opponent, Yanukovich, to a state visit at his country estate. Yanukovich assured Putin that Russian would once again be elevated to the status of a national language at home in Ukraine, and that he had no intention of joining NATO. Putin was satisfied, reassuring the status quo candidate that Kiev's current course is "completely in line with our own best interests."

However, the head of the Kremlin, apparently not yet convinced of the outcome of the upcoming election, decided to pay a visit to his neighbor this week. Putin plans to address the Ukrainian people at a military parade scheduled to take place this Thursday on Kreshchatik Street, Kiev's main boulevard.

Although the official reason for the parade is to commemorate the 60th anniversary of Ukraine's liberation from the Germans, its true purpose is probably to demonstrate who is in charge of the country. For the past 60 years, this day of liberation has been celebrated in September. But now the military parade, as a result of historians' "more recent conclusions," is suddenly taking place on October 28. It's a normal work day, 72 hours before the presidential election.