Storm of protest at Ukraine result
Opposition leader's call to defy security forces
 |  A tent camp in support of opposition candidate Viktor Yushchenko. |
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 Ukrainians choose between Western-leaning and Kremlin-praised candidates.
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KIEV, Ukraine -- Opposition supporters camped out on the streets of Kiev after crying foul in a bitterly contested runoff vote in Ukraine's presidential election.
With nearly all the ballots counted by Monday evening, the election commission said Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych had a slim lead over liberal challenger Viktor Yushchenko.
Yushchenko told thousands of supporters to stay in Kiev's main square overnight to keep a tent encampment safe from security forces who he said wanted to dismantle it.
"We have received information that authorities want to destroy our tent city at 3 a.m. ... At two o'clock there should be more of us than now," Yushchenko said, speaking to supporters at Kiev's Independence Square, in remarks quoted by Reuters.
"We must defend every chestnut tree, every tent. We must show to the authorities we are here for a long time.... There must be more and more of us here every hour."
The ex-Soviet state's nationalist western regions also rebelled, saying they would recognise only Yushchenko as the rightful president.
Four major cities in the western heartland, including Lviv, said they would recognise only Yushchenko as the legitimate president and backed opposition calls for a general strike.
Lviv, the cradle of Ukrainian nationalism, has set a trend for central and eastern regions in the past, and spearheaded the drive for independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.
Meanwhile PM Yanukovich said that the majority of voters had backed him.
"The preliminary results are optimistic -- a majority of voters have shown their preference for my position and program," he said in a statement.
Officials earlier said that with 99.38 percent of precincts counted, Yanukovych had 49.42 percent to Yushchenko's 46.70 percent -- a mathematically winning lead.
Earlier partial results showed Yanukovych less than one percentage point ahead. An exit poll, conducted under a Western-funded program, gave Yushchenko 54 percent of the vote to Yanukovych's 43 percent.
Another poll put Yushchenko ahead by 49.4 to 45.9 percent, the Interfax news agency reported.
European and U.S. observers called the polls fraudulent -- and large protests were taking place in Kiev.
However, Russian President Vladimir Putin congratulated Yanukovich on his victory in a presidential election, Interfax news agency reported.
Reporting from Brazil, where Putin is on an official visit, Interfax quoted his press secretary as saying the Russian president had telephoned Yanukovich, telling him "the battle had been hard-fought, but open and honest, and his victory was convincing."
Yushchenko, addressing a crowd of about 10,000 supporters in Kiev's main Independence Square, urged them to set up tent camps in the capital. Many tents were already blocking traffic, The Associated Press reported.
"We will not leave this place until we win," Yushchenko said. "The people's will cannot be broken. People's votes cannot be broken.
Many protesters said they would return to the square after going home to get warmer clothes. Protesters also set out from Yushchenko's western stronghold, Lviv, bound for Kiev.
Observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the Council of Europe, the European Parliament and NATO criticized the balloting.
"There was certainly fraud, though this is difficult to quantify," a leading member of the OSCE delegation, Gert-Hinrich Ahrens, told CNN.
He said there had been incidents of violence and intimidation -- and in some areas 5 percent of voters had been added to the lists on voting day, many of them with certificates allowing them to vote away from their place of residence.
"This election did not meet a considerable number of international standards for democratic elections," mission leader Bruce George told AP.
"The abuse of state resources in favor of the prime minister continued, as well as an overwhelming media bias in his favor."
Even stronger criticism came from Richard Lugar, chairman of the U.S. Senate's Foreign Relations Committee.
"It is now apparent that a concerted and forceful program of election-day fraud and abuse was enacted with either the leadership or cooperation of governmental authorities," said Lugar, who was sent to Kiev as U.S. President George W. Bush's envoy.
The Lviv city council announced that it recognized Yushchenko as the president and was ready to fulfill "all of his orders and decrees."
Yushchenko's key ally, Yulia Tymoshenko, called for a general strike.
"Stop working, stop learning, make it all stop," she said.
CNN's Ryan Chilcote says that Yushchenko says he will call for an emergency session of parliament to look at the poll violations he alleges -- and for an anulment of results where those violations took place.
The opposition leader says he will continue with demonstrations until he is declared winner, Chilcote says.
The OSCE's Ahrens said that the opposition had the opportunity to go to Ukraine's Supreme Court go to challenge results.
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Associated Press contributed to this report.
