The fat lady ain't sung, but she is on stage

The BBC for January 1 reports that

Ukraine's Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych has resigned from his post. ...

However, Mr Yanukovych refused to admit defeat in Ukraine's re-run presidential election, which was declared in favour of Western-leaning Viktor Yushchenko.

He says he is going to make a final appeal to the Supreme Court, which is his legal right. At that same time, he said "I don't have much hope."

Under different circumstances, I think it possible that the Supreme Court might have found some justice in his claims about disenfranchisement of ill and elderly people, since the same Court had found the election law changes (instituted in the wake of the earlier, fraudulent election) which banned voting from home to be unconstitutional. Because that decision came so shortly before the December 26 election, I expect it's likely that even given the best of intentions, some voting areas could not scramble fast enough to change their plans and that some voters were disenfranchised as a result. But given the election fatigue the country seems to be experiencing as well as the fact that, as I noted Thursday, even if his high estimate of the number of disenfranchised voters was accepted, Yanukovich would have to get a truly overwhelming number of those votes to win, I think he's right about his chances before the Court.

At the same time, Yanukovich was not willing to go quietly and seemed eager to sow seeds of political deadlock.

He said he could not work with people loyal to Mr Yushchenko. "I find it impossible to occupy any post in a government headed by these authorities," he said.

The New York Times described Yanukovich as

increasingly isolated, abandoned even by some of his closest advisers and by all appearances deeply embittered,

so perhaps this is just the frustration of a defeated individual who thought his patrons (such as President Kuchma) would stand by him to the end. But the fact remains that while the election has ended, the divisions in Ukraine have not. And 44% of Ukrainian voters, expressing that divide, supported Yanukovich. Viktor Yushchenko has his work cut out for him.