KIEV, Aug. 10 – Arseniy Yatseniuk, a popular presidential candidate, said Monday his campaign activists have come under several attacks across Ukraine over the weekend, raising fears the presidential election in January 2010 may get ugly.

Natalia Zaytseva’s arm was broken following an attack by an unknown assailant in Kerch, Crimea, while distributing Yatseniuk campaign material, while six incidents had also taken place in three different Kiev districts, the campaign reported.

This comes after another activist, Natalia Butrymko, was admitted to the hospital on August 6 with brain concussion after an attack by Uzhgorod Mayor Serhiy Ratushniak in the TransCarpathian region.

Ratushniak, who physically assaulted Butrymko and broke a campaign tent in the downtown Uzhgorod, followed later with a provocative television interview in which he made racially charged, insulting and anti-Semitic comments targeting Yatseniuk.

The comments raised tensions in ethnically diverse region of TransCarpathia, which has a total of more than 100 ethnic groups living in the region.

“If yesterday Ratushniak started to fight with Jews, today he can start fighting Hungarians, tomorrow he can start fighting Russians, Poles and all others,” Yatseniuk said at a press conference in Lviv.

“As a Ukrainian, as a representative of a title nation, I want to assure all: Jews, Russians, Tatars, Hungarians, and all others that I will protect every one of them because the multi-ethnicity is the strength of the Ukrainian state.”

“But for people like Ratushniak and all others who come forward against any ethnic group I will arrange the Nuremberg process,” Yatseniuk said.

The TransCanrpathian Prosecutor’s Office on Monday opened a criminal investigation against Ratushniak for assaulting the campaign activist, according to a statement from the Prosecutor General’s Office.

The attacks against Yatseniuk campaigners come days after the release of opinion poll showing that Yatseniuk competes against Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko for entering the runoff with opposition leader Viktor Yanukovych.

Yanukovych is the frontrunner with 22% popular support, followed by Tymoshenko’s 13% and Yatseniuk’s 11%, according to a poll by the Razumkov Center, a Kiev-based independent think tank.

Yanukovych would defeat both Tymoshenko and Yatseniuk in the runoff: by 33%-24% and 32%-28%, respectively, the poll showed.

Should Yatseniuk square off against Tymoshenko in the runoff, Yatseniuk would prevail 26% vs. 19%, according to the poll.

“Who will enter the runoff will be defined by the people of Ukraine,” Yatseniuk said on Monday. “I am confident in my victory, but the battle will be difficult and hard. The main competition will be between me and my chief opponent – Viktor Yanukovych.”

Ratushniak, in an interview with Publichniye Liudi over the weekend, defended his actions against the Yatseniuk campaigner.

“These [journalists] who lick the boots [of television station owners] have been screaming that I have badly beaten, raped, killed... Who? This striptease girl that has been posing for days and that has jumped on me, scratched me and hit me my head by her cell phone?” (tl/ez)