With all this talk of the Ukraine possibly splitting...

...it's important to remember who started it.

It was 5.30pm on election day in Ukraine when the thugs in masks arrived armed with rubber truncheons.

Vitaly Kizima, an election monitor at Zhovtneve in Ukraine's Sumy region, watched in horror as 30 men in tracksuits stormed into the village polling station.

"They started to beat voters and election officials, trying to push through towards the ballot boxes," he told The Telegraph.

"People's faces were cut from blows to the head. There was blood all over."

The thugs - believed to be loyal to the pro-Russian presidential candidate Viktor Yanukovich from his stronghold, Donetsk - were repulsed only when locals pushed them back and a policeman fired warning shots.

The catalogue of abuses in the contest between Mr Yanukovich, the prime minister, and his opponent, the pro-Western Viktor Yushchenko, is growing longer by the day.

Just wait until elections in blue states are like this.