| But of course ... |
Offering her first public comment on the election, on Feb. 7, Ms. Tymoshenko said she would go to court to overturn the victory of her opponent, Viktor F. Yanukovich, who was reported to have won by 3.5 percentage points.
“Yanukovich is not our president,' Ms. Tymoshenko said in a televised address to the nation. “He will never become the legitimate elected president of Ukraine under any circumstances.'
Ms. Tymoshenko acknowledged that Ukrainians were weary from years of political instability. She said she would not organize the kind of mass protests that shook the country during the 2004 Orange Revolution, which she helped lead. But she said she was confident that the election would be thrown out.
Still, she faces a significant challenge. European election monitors praised the balloting, saying that it was conducted freely and fairly, and President Obama and other world leaders have called Mr. Yanukovich in recent days to congratulate him.
Mr. Yanukovich, the opposition leader, mounted a comeback in this election after being the loser in the Orange Revolution. He has ties to the Kremlin, and has already indicated that he hopes to improve Ukraine's relations with Russia. He has said that Ms. Tymoshenko should concede and resign as prime minister for the good of the nation.
Ms. Tymoshenko had stirred speculation that she might do so by remaining largely out of the public eye in recent days. But she is known for her political intensity, and the tone of her remarks on Saturday night suggested that she would not immediately respond to domestic or international pressure to back down.
Preliminary results showed that Mr. Yanukovich won by roughly 900,000 votes. But Ms. Tymoshenko said that more than a million votes had been falsified in his favor. She said that on the Crimean Peninsula, a Yanukovich stronghold, 3 to 8 percent of the votes had been stolen for him.
She said some election monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe would support her in court, though she did not mention which ones. The organization approved of the election.
While not seeking demonstrations, Ms. Tymoshenko appeared to be trying to reignite the Orange movement, which arose after Mr. Yanukovich won the 2004 presidential election and his campaign was accused of fraud. Protests forced a new election, which Mr. Yanukovich lost to Viktor A. Yushchenko.
“Our opponents, as they did in 2004, demonstrated that they are not prepared to be elected by honest, democratic rules,' Ms. Tymoshenko said Saturday night. “They have perfectly well realized that they have no chance of earning the sympathy of the majority of people in a lawful way.'
There are major differences between the current situation and the earlier one. European election monitors assailed the 2004 election won by Mr. Yanukovich as deeply flawed, and many countries would not recognize it. What is more, Ukrainians were more enthusiastic about politics back then. Now, Ukraine's economy is hurting from the financial crisis, and the public is disillusioned with infighting in the government.