Pro-Russia Yanukovych winner of Ukraine vote

KIEV, Ukraine — Election officials named Russia-friendly Viktor Yanukovych as the official winner of Ukraine's presidential election Sunday, thwarting Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko's hopes of overturning the vote.

Tymoshenko's last recourse is now with the courts, after the Central Election Commission also dismissed her complaints of fraud and misconduct during the Feb. 7 ballot.

Yanukovych won the contest by just 3.5 percentage points — or some 888,000 of the nearly 25.5 million ballots cast, the commission said. It said he won 48.95 percent in an election that saw nearly 70 percent turnout. Tymoshenko garnered 45.47 percent, while another 4.36 percent of voters backed neither candidate.

"The commission names Yanukovych the winner," Chairman Volodymyr Shapoval said in a televised meeting with other commission members, who applauded. "This applause is for the newly elected president."

The announcement appeared to have been rushed, coming three days before the deadline, even as complaints of fraud poured in from Tymoshenko's staff. One Tymoshenko representative on the commission refused to read out the results from her districts, forcing a commission secretary to read them out in her place.

"There are still complaints that have not been reviewed by the courts. The result has been announced too early," said another Tymoshenko delegate, Volodymyr Pilipenko.

Late Saturday, Tymoshenko broke six days of silence since the election to ask Ukrainians to support her in challenging the election results in court. She said the vote had been rigged.

International observers deemed the election free and fair, however, hurting Tymoshenko's chances of mounting a successful challenge. President Barack Obama and other leaders already congratulated Yanukovych last week.

No date has been set yet for Yanukovych's inauguration, according to his commission delegate Oleksander Lavrynovych.

Yanukovych campaigned on promises to improve ties with Russia, which became strained as the current pro-Western president, Victor Yushchenko, courted NATO and EU membership for Ukraine.

"Our relations (with Russia) must above all be friendly and pragmatic. We will return them to the format that has historically existed between the Russian and Ukrainian people," he told Russia's Vesti-24 television.