Ukrainian Presidential Candidate Hurt in Grenade Attack

Ukraine’s presidential campaign turned violent when assailants hurled two grenades at an election rally, injuring a top contender and more than 30 other people, police said Sunday.

The attack Saturday night on lawmaker Natalia Vitrenko, a radical leftist, was the most serious outburst of violence in the run-up to the Oct. 31 presidential ballot in the former Soviet republic.

Police arrested two suspects and were searching for the campaign organizer of a rival candidate, the Interior Ministry said.

Vitrenko, who heads the Progressive Socialist Party, is considered a leading challenger to incumbent President Leonid D. Kuchma and has been consistently running second to him in opinion polls.

Kuchma condemned the attack, saying, “Nobody, not any destructive force, will destabilize the situation” in Ukraine, the Itar-Tass news agency reported.

The attack took place in Ingulets, 12 miles outside the southeastern industrial city of Kryvyy Rih, where about 1,000 people attended Vitrenko’s rally at a local cultural club.

Vitrenko was leaving the building and was surrounded by 60 to 80 party members and aides when the grenades exploded.

“Many people were thrown aside by the shock wave,” Vitrenko said. “When we began our fight . . . [we] understood that we are confronting clans which would not stop at physically eliminating their opponents.”

Vitrenko said she suffered shrapnel wounds to her stomach and leg and might need surgery.

Ministry spokesman Viktor Tsidorenko later quoted one of the suspects as saying he allegedly received the grenades used in the assault from his brother, who runs the regional electoral campaign of another presidential candidate, Oleksandr Moroz. His election headquarters in Kiev denied any involvement in the attack.

Vitrenko, 47, a Soviet-educated economist and a self-described “true Marxist,” is the only woman running for the presidency. She campaigns on a platform combining populism, nostalgia for the Soviet Union, anti-Western sentiments and pledges of government support for the needy.