UKRAINE:Kiev's main squares are aflutter with flags, and colour-coded campaign booths dot the city centre - blue for prime minister Viktor Yanukovich, orange for President Viktor Yushchenko's party, and white with a red heart for the bloc led by Yulia Tymoshenko.
After the huge demonstrations of late 2004, which annulled Yanukovich's fraudulent election victory and swept Yushchenko to power, it is hard not to feel like territory is being staked out ahead of this Sunday's parliamentary election - and the protests that might follow it.
The election has inspired a tentative rapprochement between Yushchenko and Tymoshenko, the leaders of the so-called Orange Revolution, and polls suggest that together they will garner something close to the 30 per cent predicted for the Regions Party of Yanukovich.
But in a bitter battle that will go down to the wire, few people in Ukraine expect the eventual loser to quietly accept defeat and go into opposition.
The "orange" parties have openly accused Yanukovich of trying to rig the ballot in his stronghold of eastern Ukraine, where his party is alleged to have produced fraudulent electoral rolls that include ineligible voters and, in one city, the names of some 19,000 dead people.
"We have collected lots of information suggesting that the Regions Party is losing support and is trying to employ the same techniques they used in 2004 and to some extent in the parliamentary election of 2006," Hryhoriy Nemyria, a senior aide to Tymoshenko, told The Irish Times.
Yanukovich, in turn, accuses his rivals of using similar tactics in central and western Ukraine where they are strongest - creating an atmosphere of suspicion that is likely to fuel post-election legal battles and perhaps street protests - albeit on a smaller scale than in 2004.
"The situation we have today in Ukraine is that some people will not accept the result of anything if it doesn't serve their own purposes," said Kostyantyn Gryshchenko, foreign policy adviser to Yanukovich.
Gryshchenko blames Yushchenko for failing to stand above politics and act as an impartial guarantor of the constitution, instead of engaging in a power struggle with the prime minister that Sunday's election is supposed to resolve.
"It is difficult when the president's decrees, which form the foundation for holding this election, are in themselves not constitutional. They can be challenged in the constitutional court - but then that body is also split along party lines."
The Regions Party appears confident of victory on Sunday, and rejects both the popular portrayal of Yanukovich as pro-Russian and anti-EU and the suggestion that only his allies were engaged in fraudulent practices in the 2004 presidential election.
"There were quite a number of irregularities by all participants," Gryshchenko said.
"They were not exclusive to one party. But some parties were more PR-savvy in presenting their views in a manner that helped them gain the respect and support of the West."
He also believes these elections will not spawn huge demonstrations - though he admits to having no idea what kind of government they will produce, either a reunited "orange" team comprising supporters of Yushchenko and Tymoshenko, or an unlikely coalition of the president's party with that of his erstwhile enemy, Yanukovich.
"There will no doubt be disputes and challenges," Gryshchenko said. "But I do not expect major street protests - unless the results show a total disregard for the genuine will of the people."