The popular voice coming from the streets in central Kiev on Wednesday was once again loud and clear; tens of thousands of demonstrators, wearing the symbolically hopeful color orange, again braved the cold to protest against what most believe to be a stolen election. They want opposition candidate Viktor Yushchenko sworn in as president. And they want the official election results -- 46.7 percent for Yushchenko against 49.4 percent for the government candidate Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych -- to be thrown out. Yushchenko even took the potentially volatile step on Tuesday of claiming victory, staging a mock swearing-in ceremony for himself, and asking for international recognition as Ukraine's president.

Despite widespread accusations of election fraud --independent exit polls conducted anonymously on the day of the election show Yushchenko to have won by up to 11 percentage points and European governments and the United States have criticized the vote as fraudulent -- Yanukovych supporters are also digging in their heels. Current Ukraine President Leonid Kuchma, who stands firmly behind Yanukovych, went on television Tuesday evening to call the demonstrations a "political farce ... (which are) extremely dangerous and may lead to unforeseeable consequences." The state security forces have likewise warned that they will not tolerate any "illegalities" and Russian President Vladimir Putin, who enjoys close relations with both Kuchma and Yanukovych, rushed to declare the elections "free and fair" and to congratulate Yanukovych on his victory.

Protestors build tent city

A new tent city is also developing on a wooded slope in Kiev about 500 meters from the pro-Yushchenko demonstrations. The inhabitants are thousands of Yanukovych supporters.

In short, the country of 47 million is radically divided. And its not just an ideological split -- it is also a geographical one. Consider: in one economically powerful region in the Russian-speaking eastern half of Ukraine, government candidate Yanukovych received 96 percent of the vote. In two western-Ukraine cities (Lvov and Ivano-Frankovsk), challenger Yushchenko received 92 and 96 percent respectively. Doubts about the validity of such numbers aside, the country is neatly divided: The western-oriented, Christian, Ukrainian speakers in the West versus the Orthodox, Russian-speakers in the East and on the Crimean Peninsula. The situation could become an explosive one.

The differences between the two regions run deep. For more than 300 years, Ukrainians and Russians lived together in the same country under Russian rule. For the Russian-Orthodox easterners, the decade-old independence of Ukraine has done very little to change their Russophile worldview. Economically more developed, the densely-populated East also depends heavily on the state coal subsidies that Yanukovych says he will continue. And the region Yanukovych comes from, the coal-rich Donezk Region, accounts for one-third of the Ukrainian budget all by itself.

Opposition candidate Yushchenko, on the other hand, has little support in the East and he hasn't yet articulated a clear plan for that part of the country. Furthermore, the region remains skeptical of any attempts to upset the profitable status quo; Yushchenko's pledge that he would quickly lead the former Soviet state into the European Union, however unrealistic, is viewed with mistrust. The result has so far been that opposition calls for a general strike to protest election fraud are falling on deaf ears in the East.

Western Ukraine, on the other hand, has, since Ukraine's early 1990s independence, seen a new search for a uniquely Ukrainian identity. The Ukrainian language is spoken much more than Russian and inhabitants are overwhelmingly Christian. Furthermore, they are much more westward-looking than those in the East and are supportive of Yushchenko's calls for more European integration and of his desires to take the Ukrainian economy out of the hands of the the country's powerful (and mostly eastern) economic oligarchs. The economically depressed region has received few benefits from the post-Soviet status quo. City governments across western Ukraine have already lined up behind "the legally elected Yushchenko."

Pleas for calm

Current president Leonid Kuchma recognizes the danger, and has already issued pleas for cool heads, saying a split Ukraine benefits nobody. European leaders, including German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder on Wednesday, have likewise appealed for calm. And so far, demonstrations have been non-violent.

Yanukovych, too, seems to realize that he is on skating on thin ice. The brawny politician, who once drove race cars as the Soviet representative in Monte-Carlo and who has occasionally relied on his fists in government debates when his arguments don't do the trick, has been reined in by his advisors. He's aware that especially the young and the well-educated voted for his challenger and is offering the opposition "round table" discussions (to "consider" the opposition point of view) and has offered Yushchenko and his supporters a say in the government.

On Wednesday, any sort of solution seemed a long way off. The opposition has said that it would only hold talks with the government to discuss a transfer of power to Yushchenko. And European Union mullings to send a high-level mission to mediate in Kiev seem less than imminent.

Meanwhile, old tactics of Soviet power politics have begun anew. While calling for negotiation, Yanukovych also warned, "we can also go in a different direction," meaning a more violent one. The Ukrainian security police SBU -- which has close ties with Moscow -- also weighed in. The demonstration organizers should be aware, it says, in a veiled threat, of their own personal responsibility for the potential consequences of their actions.