Ukraine's leading English-language newspaper since 1995

Volodymyr Lytvyn (Konstantyn Klymenko) Volodymyr Lytvyn’s main message – that Ukraine needs only him – found support with only 2.6 percent of the voters in pre-election polls.

A silver-haired historian, he joined politics in 1994 as a deputy head of the presidential administration. His input was marked by a controversy with allegations that he conspired to murder Ukraine’s outspoken political journalist Georgiy Gongadze in 2000. With the case limping in the prosecutor’s office, he served as a speaker in 2002-2006 and regained this post again in 2008. The leader of the leftist People’s Party, he sets himself apart from other politicians by flagging Ukraine’s agricultural problems. If he became president, his non-urban voters would expect him to make an inventory of land privileges, provide cheap loans and tax relief. Battling corruption, increasing pensions, renationalization plans do not differ much from other candidates’ programs. Families might be pleased to know that the state would pay a quarter of their home loan after the birth of a first child and all of it after the third arrives. So, it’s best to have triplets at once. How the budget will cope with a baby boom is left to one’s imagination.