Photos by Yaroslav Debelyi, Mykola Lazarenko, UNIAN, politician personal web-sites. Presidential candidates campaigned frantically in the last weeks before the Jan. 17 vote as the nation started to awaken from the long New Year and Christmas holidays. Vasyl Protyvsikh brought a small flock of rams to the center of Kyivon Jan. 5, who symbolized the stubborn lot of politicians clinging to power, and attempted to drive them away with a broom.


Yulia Tymoshenko traveled the regions with her star-studded singing team. Ruslana, Ukraine’s winner of Eurovision, was one of the stars that accompanied her on a trip to Brovary, in Kyiv Oblast, on Jan. 6.


Victor Yushchenko turned on the male charm in Cherkasy on Jan. 10 during an event with art and culture workers that he visited on his trip to the region.


Oleh Tiahnybok, this election’s most right-wing candidate, traveled to Sevastopol in Crimea, where his activists got into a brawl with the local pro-Russian movement activists. An arrest of one pro-Russian activist on Jan. 6.


Victor Yanukovych stood through the Christmas sermon on Jan. 6 in Kyiv Pechersk Lavra.


Sergiy Tigipko met with 24-member crew of Ariana ship that had returned from an eight-month captivity by Somali pirates to Odesa on the same day. He had allegedly contributed a part of the $2.8 million ransom.