Democracy with Ukrainian Characteristics

Boris Kolesnikov, Ukraine’s powerful Deputy Prime Minister, spent the last day of the election season, Oct. 26, nursing a bit of hangover in his office with a pack of Marlboros and a bottomless cup of espresso. The day before, he had celebrated his 50th birthday in his home region of Donetsk, the coal-mining heartland of the ruling Party of Regions. So he did not have much energy left for campaigning when he went back to Kiev, the capital, the next day. The press conference he was scheduled to give at the InterContinental hotel, where the Party of Regions had set up its campaign headquarters, was forced to proceed without him. The reason was the traffic, his aides explained. Kolesnikov did not feel like slogging through it to go meet the press. And besides, his party knew that these elections were a lock.