Viktor Yushchenko, 50, and Viktor Yanukovich, 54, may have similar-sounding names, but they have very different visions for Ukraine's future.
Yushchenko, who hopes to take the former Soviet republic into the European Union and NATO, narrowly won the first-round election three weeks ago, leading his closest opponent by a mere 156,000 votes.
That rival, Yanukovich, wants to take Ukraine back into closer alliance with its giant neighbor. He has been prime minister in the government of outgoing pro-Moscow President Leonid Kuchma, and has the Kremlin's backing.
In Sunday's run-off, several exit polls showed Yushchenko ahead, but the Yanukovich camp dismissed them as inaccurate.
Early Monday morning, Kiev time the Central Electoral Commission website showed that, with 75.2 percent of votes counted, Yanukovich was leading by 48.65 percent of the votes to Yushchenko's 47.72.
The actual difference in votes between the two men was 202,168.
Warning the election was being rigged, Yushchenko earlier threatened mass protests. Thousands of his supporters, many clad in trademark orange, were gathering in the main square in Kiev, to demand a fair count of the vote.
Yushchenko also turned to the EU for help, urging "international attention to focus on this fraud."
Yanukovich's supporters, meanwhile, indicated they could bring tens of thousands of well-organized Russia-speaking miners from the east of the country, where the Moscow-backed prime minister's blue and white colors are as dominant as the orange of Yushchenko is in the west.
Kuchma, who is stepping down after a decade in power, warned that there would be "no revolution," and armed security forces were deployed to guard the electoral commission offices in the capital.
Sunday's voting followed a hard-fought campaign. Yushchenko's first-round win was by a tiny margin, but it was still seen as giving him a boost that analysts thought could influence swing voters in the run-off.
But his rival's bid also got a boost of a different type when Kuchma fired the heads of 11 local district administrations, then of which were in areas Yushchenko had won.
Russian President Vladimir Putin also visited Ukraine twice to bolster support for his favored candidate.
Yanukovich has pledged his allegiance to the country's Soviet past. "I used to be a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union," he said in a recent interview.
"I don't feel ashamed of it. On the contrary, I am proud of it. My life in the Soviet Union and my membership in the Communist Party gave me the priority of the idea of justice and equality."
President Bush has warned that the U.S. would have to review its relations with Ukraine if the presidential vote was not fair.
In a letter to Kuchma, released on November 20, Bush thanked the outgoing president for sending Ukrainian troops to Iraq.
But he said that if the run-off vote was unfair, Washington "will be obliged to review our relations with Ukraine and with individuals who participated in fraud and manipulation."
Ukraine contributed some 1,600 troops to the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq, in what was seen here as an attempt to restore relations with Washington hurt by allegations of arms sales to Saddam Hussein.
Ukraine's election season has been closely watched by outside monitors.
The U.S. State Department reported irregularities in the Oct. 31 poll, and observers from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) also said it failed to meet international standards.
But a group of former U.S. congressmen who visited around 70 polling stations declared the first round poll basically free and fair.
U.S. press reports at the weekend said the Democratic ex-congressmen had been paid $500 per day during their visit to Ukraine, "by a Washington lobbyist registered as an agent of ... Yanukovich."
(CNSNews International Editor Patrick Goodenough contributed to this report.)
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