KIEV, March 16 – Oleh Tiahnybok, the leader of Svoboda, the nationalist party that beat the Tymopshenko Bloc in Sunday’s election in the Ternopil region by a big margin, said Monday he will run for Ukrainian presidency in January 2010.

Tiahnybok, 40, is the first politician to declare intention to run, as he seeks to capitalize on his party’s overwhelming performance amid apparent collapse of support for Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko.

“I will run for the presidency,” Tiahnybok said in an interview with Ukrayinska Pravda online newspaper on Monday. “And, I hope to enter the runoff.”

The rise of Svoboda, or Freedom, a party that uses nationalist rhetoric, comes as voters have been increasingly abandoning support for Tymoshenko, a long-time favorite in western regions of the country.

Svoboda collected 33.8% of the vote in Ternopil in what becomes the party’s first major electoral success ever, while the Tymoshenko group had scored 8% of the vote, according to preliminary results released by the local election committee Monday after counting 98% of ballots.

Tymoshenko’s decline is spectacular. Her party has been enjoying support of up to 60% in the region as recent as 12 months ago, but cards changed for the party six months ago after Ukraine had entered its worst economic crisis since early 1990s.

United Center, a group loyal to Viktor Baloha, the chief of staff at President Viktor Yushchenko’s office, scored 13.8% of the vote, followed by the Regions Party (9.7%), Ukrainian People’s Party (8%), Our Ukraine (5.5%) and the group led by Parliamentary Speaker Volodymyr Lytvyn (3.6%), according to the results.

Svoboda’s platform calls for “protecting” the rights of ethnic Ukrainians, though Tiahnybok has assured that the party does not seek to discriminate any of 140 ethnic groups living in Ukraine.

“We are defending the rights of Ukrainians as representatives of the title nation, as representatives of the ethnic majority,” Tiahnybok said. “We are not against anybody, we are for ourselves.”

“We don’t want to rid ethnic minorities of any ethnic, cultural or educational rights,” he said. “We want to ensure ethnic, cultural and educations rights for the ethnic majority. That’s all.”

Svoboda collected about 2% of the vote at the most recent parliamentary election at the end of 2007 and analysts do not expect Tiahnybok to perform strongly in the presidential vote.

But he may play spoiler for other candidates by taking away votes from pro-Western candidates and perhaps mobilizing electoral support for pro-Russian candidates in eastern parts of Ukraine.

“The nationalist niche is restricted and regional-based,” Volodymyr Fesenko, the director of Penta, a Kiev-based think tank, said. “The victory of Svoboda is the sign of major radicalization of the post-Orange electorate in western Ukraine. But I wouldn’t make any radical conclusions from that.” (tl/ez)