UKRAINE….

Incumbent resident Leonid Kuchma is poised to win a second term when Ukraine goes to the polls in a violence-marred election October 31. Natalya Vitrenko, the energetic, rabble-rousing self-proclaimed “true Marxist” was the target of an October 2 bomb attack that injured her and thirty bystanders. Two men, described as Russian citizens, were arrested on the spot. One is the brother of a regional campaign manager for Oleksandr Moroz, the Socialist Party candidate from whom Vitrenko is expected to drain support, but the motives for the attack remain obscure. Moroz may have had nothing to do with the attack, but he stands to be the loser as sympathy builds for Vitrenko, who returned to the campaign trail after a short rest…. Ukraine’s divided left wing, which has four or five candidates still in the race, received another blow when Russia’s prime minister said Kuchma’s election will “consolidate relations” between the two countries. Although Ukraine’s communists and left-socialists are far more pro-Russian than Kuchma, Moscow does not want to see a communist victory in a bordering country just before Russia’s own parliamentary elections in December. The Russian endorsement should help Kuchma among Ukraine’s large Russian-speaking minority.