UKRAINE: Ukraine's presidential election and the mass unrest over its disputed vote count have exposed a centuries-old fault line dividing the country which some fear could even become the front line of a civil war.
Hundreds of thousands of protesters have taken to the streets across central and western Ukraine to denounce the official vote count handing the presidency to pro-Moscow Prime Minister Mr Viktor Yanukovich, but in eastern regions it is business as usual.
The election divided the Russian-speaking industrial east of the former Soviet state from the nationalist Ukrainian-speaking west.
The split, pushed into the background by mass poverty which followed independence in 1991, has been reopened by politicians resorting to vote-winning but divisive proposals.
The issue strikes at the very heart of Ukraine's fragile identity. In the Russian-speaking Donbass coalfield in the east, many feel greater kinship with Russia than with their fellow citizens at the other end of the country.
"There is a series of factors - historical, cultural, religious, national separating the two sides," said independent analyst Mr Oleksander Dergachev.
The majority in Donbass came there in the 1930s and the 1950s from Russia, so there is only a small population native to the region, he said.
"The region was moulded by the Soviet system so there was little development of the national culture felt in the centre of Ukraine and even more so in the west." The west is home to Ukraine's large eastern-rite Catholic minority, having been ruled by Poland and Austria-Hungary at different times. It feels distinctly part of central Europe.
The east is Orthodox, once part of Tsarist Russia and later firmly within the Soviet Union.
Most of Ukraine's more than 47 million people have lived quite happily with the cultural split in recent years. Ukrainian is the sole state language, although Russian is widely spoken.
But campaigning brought back old memories.
The pro-Russian Mr Yanukovich sparked fury among nationalists by raising two bones of contention long buried. He proposed making Russian an official language and allowing Ukrainians, principally ethnic Russians, the option of dual citizenship, now barred by the constitution.
Liberals denounce both ideas as potentially lethal to the notion of Ukrainian statehood.
The two contenders had distinct geographical power bases.
Mr Yanukovich won well over 90 per cent in the east's industrial Donetsk region, where he was once governor.
Opposition leader Mr Viktor Yushchenko ran up a similar score in the western region of Ivano-Frankivsk.
Ivano-Frankivsk and other western regions have refused to accept the results and declared Mr Yushchenko their president. In Donetsk, Mr Yushchenko's supporters are routinely branded traitors. Some politicians fear a permanent split in Ukraine whatever the outcome of the current confrontation, with Mr Yanukovich remaining in office despite the protests or Mr Yushchenko taking power after a new election or legal challenge. The west of Ukraine, or alternatively the east and the south, could declare a form of autonomy or even break away.
President Leonid Kuchma said on Wednesday that Ukraine could face the same fate as the young Soviet Union, plunged into civil war in 1919. Many in the streets share his fears.