Ukraine's repeat election campaign officially kicked off on Sunday

Ukraine's repeat election campaign officially kicked off on Sunday but the country's ruling elite was silent after news that Western-oriented opposition leader and presidential frontrunner Viktor Yushchenko was poisoned earlier in the race in this former Soviet republic. Yushchenko, in Vienna where physicians said the mystery pre-election illness that dramatically disfigured his face had been caused as a result of ingesting poison, was shown on Ukrainian television saying he was "very happy to be alive in this world today." Amid speculation that the attempt to poison Yushchenko had been intended to kill him, as he has insisted, a senior European envoy was arriving in Kiev to check on the chances of the country holding a fair vote December 26.