Score One for the People

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When president leonid Kuchma created the Ukrainian Supreme Court in 1996, he expected it — like all of the country's institutions — to be an instrument of his will. And he surely never imagined a scene like the one that unfolded Friday night, when the 21 red-robed judges, all with silver, star-shaped medallions glittering on their chests, announced their ruling on the disputed presidential election that has plunged the country into chaos. Kuchma's machine had claimed that his handpicked successor, Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, had won the Nov. 21 runoff, but international observers and supporters of opposition candidate Viktor Yushchenko said the result was twisted by massive fraud. Now, with some 100,000 Yushchenko voters in Kiev's freezing Independence Square watching on giant TV screens, Chief Justice Anatoly Yarema described "systemic and massive violations" in the campaign, the voting process and the ballot count, and said it was "impossible to declare who won." The court called for a rerun of the second round by Dec. 26.

It was a declaration of independence from Kuchma, a triumph for constitutional law and an acknowledgment of Ukraine's new political reality. And the real agents of this extraordinary change — the patriots jammed into Independence Square — erupted with wild shouts of joy. Fireworks shot into the sky, and chants of "Yu-shchen-ko! Yu-shchen-ko!" echoed through the city. They'd been camping in the frigid, snowbound square for almost two weeks, vowing not to leave until Yanukovych's victory was overturned, and they'd seen people power prevail, at least for now. Late Friday night, an exultant Yushchenko — who has survived apparent poisoning as well as massive electoral fraud — addressed the crowd, telling them: "Justice and law and freedom have started to return to Ukraine. All this happened thanks to you. You are unique heroes." Then he broke into a jig. "The Chief Justice gave us things beyond our wildest hopes," said one activist. "We have legal grounds to launch the rerun. Doesn't that give us a valid cause to celebrate?"

Yushchenko and his supporters are dancing now, but they know victory isn't assured. That's why Yushchenko isn't backing off his key demands: the dismissal of Yanukovych's cabinet and the resignation of the Central Election Commission. He also wants to restrict the use of absentee ballots, a crucial tool of pro-Yanukovych fraud. "This is where our fight is now," says Mykola Tomenko, Yushchenko's top campaign aide.

If Yushchenko does win, he will have to govern a country polarized between those in western Ukraine who want to move closer to Europe and those in the east who want to deepen relations with Russia. In Donetsk in eastern Ukraine, where most people are fervent backers of Yanukovych, enormous portraits of him hang all over the city and banners declare: president of ukraine yanukovych. "We'll never accept the Yushchenko presidency here," said Valentina, a factory blacksmith, one day before the Supreme Court's ruling. Yushchenko will also find himself caught between Russian President Vladimir Putin — who openly favored Yanukovych and, a day before the court's verdict, rejected the idea of a rerun — and Western leaders, who would like to see Ukraine carry out democratic reforms.

Putin and Yanukovych's other supporters could only watch last week while Yushchenko seized the momentum. (At one Donetsk rally, Yanukovych's wife, Lyudmila, tried to explain away the pro-Yushchenko crowds in Kiev by saying that oranges laced with drugs had been handed out to them. "People who take the oranges become addicts," she declared. "They keep standing there with their eyes glazed over.") But in reality, Yushchenko kept Kuchma and Yanukovych on the defensive by taking over Kiev with a crisply organized, well-funded movement that kept 100,000 in the streets. In Lviv, 490 km southwest of Kiev, local businessmen backed the movement. "Over 800 companies, from big banks to small kiosks, joined forces," says entrepreneur Markian Ivashchishin. "We told our employees: 'If you want to go to Kiev, we'll keep paying your salaries and bonuses.'" In Independence Square, activists set up shifts so protesters could get warm and rest before returning to the fray. "We've arranged a regular rotation here," explained activist Yuri Solomko. "Folks go home for short furloughs and then come back. We won't ease the pressure on the government."

That pressure became intense on Wednesday, when Parliament passed a vote of no confidence in Yanukovych's government. Yanukovych dismissed the nonbinding vote as illegal, but on Wednesday night when he, Kuchma and Yushchenko met for talks with Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski, Lithuanian President Valdas Adamkus and the E.U.'s foreign policy chief Javier Solana, Yanukovych seemed fatalistic and "out of it," according one participant. The meeting was "brutally open," says Jan Kubis, secretary-general of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, who was there. According to Kubis, Kwasniewski took the lead but "everyone was acutely aware that Yushchenko had 100,000 people in the street behind him" — and Yushchenko said he would never tell them to go home. That evening, Kuchma, Yush-chenko and Yanukovych appeared together on Ukrainian TV. Kuchma read a list of agreements, including one to avoid violence as they awaited the court's ruling.

Kuchma, worried about his liberty and not just his legacy, was playing for time. He has presided over a system in which "the pervasiveness of corruption and the political activities of organized crime figures often blurred the distinction between political and criminal acts," according to a 2004 U.S. State Department report. He fought for all-new elections with new candidates, which would have given him a couple of months to regroup and perhaps find a better man than Yanukovych to protect his interests. In a nod to Kuchma's concerns about his future, Lithuanian President Adamkus told Time that all sides undertook to guarantee the "personal security" of the main players.

On Thursday, Kuchma made a sudden trip to Moscow and met with Putin. TV cameras recorded their chat; Kuchma, looking tired, repeated his opposition to a rerun of the second round and Putin hastened to agree: "That would mean that you will have a third and fourth and a 25th round until one side gets the right result." If the meeting was meant to warn the Supreme Court off calling for a rerun of the second round, it failed dismally. The Kuchma appointees on the court defied his and Putin's wishes, and made a bid for the history books. Or perhaps they simply knew that any other ruling would bring the wrath of the crowd down on them. On Saturday, Kuchma released an opaque statement calling for more talks. Putin, in India, had no comment.

The crisis in Ukraine has shaken Putin's strategic worldview. Russian foreign policy has always been built on the idea of clearly defined spheres of interest that protect the country's boundaries. But those boundaries are eroding: the Baltic countries are now part of nato and the E.U.; Georgians have cast off their own Soviet-era President. If Yushchenko becomes President and moves Ukraine toward the West, Putin will fume. But his options are limited, not least by Russia's business interests in the country.

As Yushchenko's revolution has grown over the past two weeks, figures close to Putin have warned that Ukraine is a rehearsal for the uprising the West would like to instigate in Russia four years from now, when Putin's second term ends. Kremlin strategist Gleb Pavlovsky warned last week that the West viewed Ukraine as a "testing ground" for tactics that would then be used against Russia. That's farfetched, yet Moscow may have reason to worry. A few hours before the Supreme Court's decision was announced, Ekho Moskvy, one of the Russian capital's most popular radio stations, conducted a phone poll: "Do you envy what is happening in Kiev?" Sixty-six percent of respondents said yes.

Back in Independence Square, Yushchenko's supporters know their victory isn't locked in — and they're staying put until it is. "Yushchenko told the people in the Square today that they will have to stand fast," says an activist named Mikhail. "Nobody is going to disband the tent city yet. It will keep serving its purpose until Yushchenko is confirmed President, fair and square."