I was tired and cold when I came home around midnight; now I'm just tired.

We voted, then we walked around for most of the day. After the polling stations closed, there was a pro-Yushchenko rally/concert at the Independence Square, and we stopped there twice, between going somewhere to get warm. The crowd was pretty huge, though not as huge as Nov. 6 - but it was Saturday, not Sunday, then, and it was a lot warmer, and that rally started around noon, not after 8 pm. Still, I've seen quite a lot of kids tonight, and just a few drunks, and people looked happy and decisive, despite the cold. And despite the uncertainty. What I didn't like was some of the music they played (too inferior to be inpiring) and some of the politicians they invited to speak (again, too inferior to be inspiring). (Or maybe I'm just too tired of it all and thus so cranky.)

Back home, I watched TV for a while. Channel 5 was too trustworthy, so I decided to check the other channels, those that exist solely to prop Yanukovych, in order to gain perspective. What people were saying on those other channels was so disgusting and distorted that I realized how disgusting it would be to return to this country if Yanukovych wins. And, possibly, unsafe. Strange that it occurred to me only now - perhaps because we're really close to finally finding out who our next president is going to be.

Channel 5 had a beautiful moment when Mykola Veresen, a renowned journalist and one of the hosts, was talking to Dmytro Korchynskyy, a Che Guevara-style politician, a presidential candidate who got 49,641 (0.17%) votes in the first round, a careful hypocrite who calls everyone to arms but stays home himself, an unsinkable piece of shit, a man whose hateful rhetoric is often wrongly ascribed to Yushchenko, to mess things up.

Anyway, Korchynskyy was saying this: he and his party are against Yushchenko, they are the true opposition, and it will be to them that we all should run to when Yushchenko gets elected and, half a year later, disappoints us with his pro-American ways. During this last tirade, Korchynskyy turned to Veresen, who was looking at him with obvious contempt.

That was a mistake no politician should ever make. Veresen let Korchynskyy finish, and then said, very calmly and with a shade of a smile: "Normally, it's the politicians who run to us, the TV, not vice versa."

I think it was so beautiful - one of those retorts that the person it's directed at has to take a minute to digest, and when the whole meaning of it sinks in, he/she goes numb and speechless, and has very few reasons left to go on living in general. Beautiful.

What else...

I don't want to write about the preliminary results yet - it's too early and I'm too tired. Just one thing: in my voting district, according to the Central Election Committee, 11,256 people (25.98%) voted for Yanukovych and 29,749 people (68.68%) voted for Yushchenko (64.7% of the votes have been counted so far). That's encouraging - and not surprising, because in the first round 40,978 people (56.37%) voted for Yushchenko and 13,381 (18.4%) voted for Yanukovych. More neighbors in the enemy camp than I would've ever wished for, but that's okay: they have the right to vote whichever way they like, and I have the right to consider them assholes.

Speaking about assholes, someone hacked the site of Obozrevatel, a pro-Yushchenko Internet publication, this afternoon. When I went to their page, there were only two lines there, black on white, in Russian:

ZABERU YA BULLETEN DOMOY,
HUY VAM A NE GOLOS MOY!

(A rough and unrhymed translation: "I'll take my bulletin home with me, you'll get a dick instead of my vote.")

Later, the site was restored.

It's almost 5 am now. Yushchenko has asked his supporters to gather at the Independence Square at 9 am. I'm not sure I'll make it. I'll try but there's a chance I'll oversleep...

The latest results:

65.64% of the vote counted
Yushchenko: 46.89%
Yanukovych: 49.49%

More later.