DONETSK, Ukraine, Dec 21 (AFP) - Supporters of Ukraine's pro-Russia presidential candidate Viktor Yanukovich Tuesday barred a motorcade of his rival's backers from entering the eastern city of Donetsk, a participant said.
The column of some 50 cars, plastered with the orange stickers of opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko, has been touring Yanukovich bastions in eastern Ukraine for nearly a week in an effort to gather support for their candidate.
But as the cars approached the city of Donetsk on Tuesday, some 300 vehicles filled with Yanukovich backers blocked the way, Oksana Laka, one of around 150 participants in the Yushchenko convoy, told AFP by telephone.
"They surrounded our cars, began to beat on the cars and scream, swearing," she said, her voice quivering less than an hour afterward. "It was so scary, we didn't know what to do."
When the column turned on another road, they found it littered with nails that punctured the tires of several cars.
Laka was among the Yushchenko supporters who started from Kiev on December 14 with the aim of reaching out to people in Yanukovich strongholds.
Donetsk is one of Yanukovich's strongest bastions of support, where many were infuriated with the opposition's "orange revolution" protests that embroiled the nation after a contested vote on November 21.
Yanukovich officially won that poll but was later stripped of his victory by a supreme court that ruled the election had been riddled with fraud and ordered a new ballot, which has been set for December 26.
Earlier in the day, some 300 mostly university students burned effigies of Yushchenko and his allies Yulia Timoshenko and Petro Poroshenko in downtown Donetsk as they waited for the Yushchenko supporter motorcade, which calls itself a "peace train."
12/21/2004 16:06 GMT - AFP