Ukraine's leading English-language newspaper since 1995

Regions Party leader Viktor Yanukovych has said he is confident that he will be far ahead of his opponents during the 2010 presidential election. Regions Party leader Viktor Yanukovych has said he is confident that he will be far ahead of his opponents during the 2010 presidential election.

"[The election scenario of] 2004 won't be repeated, and our victory will be shattering... We'll work, and I think that we'll be able to increase the margin even more, and this will be a sentence for this government that took away our victory in 2004," he said live on television in Odesa on Nov. 27.

Yanukovych said that after gaining the upper hand at the 2004 presidential election, he gave up victory for another candidate in order to avoid bloodshed.

"I didn't want mothers to lose their children and wives their husbands. I didn't want dead bodies from Kyiv to flow down the Dnipro. I didn't want to assume power through bloodshed," he said.