It was meant to be an entertaining hunt for the most revered Ukrainian in history, echoing the successful BBC series Great Britons. Instead, Great Ukrainians has become mired in a very modern vote-rigging scandal.

Far from uniting Ukrainians in appreciation of their history, the contest appears to have deepened divisions between the former Soviet republic's pro-Russian East and nationalist West. Now 77 Ukrainian MPs have written to Mark Thompson, the Director-General of the BBC, asking him to order an inquiry.

A day after viewers were told that almost 650,000 people had voted for Yaroslav the Wise, an 11th-century prince of Kievan Rus, as the Greatest Ukrainian of all time, Vakhtang Kipiani, the editor of the show, claimed that the result had been fixed.

He said that until the final two days Stepan Bandera, a Second World War partisan who led the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists, had been well ahead when more than half a million votes were sent by text message for Yaroslav. Bandera finished third, with 261,247 votes.

The controversy carries strong political overtones because Yaroslav is regarded as one of the greatest rulers of Kievan Rus, an empire considered as the cradle of Russia's polity, religion and civilisation.

Nationalists revere Bandera for leading a guerrilla war against the Soviet army and Nazi Germany. But others regard him as a traitor to the Soviet motherland; Bandera was poisoned in 1959 on orders from Moscow.

Mr Kipiani told journalists that only a few dozen mobile telephones had been used to send in votes for Yaroslav. On his web blog he added: “Sixty thousand votes for Yaroslav the Wise during one month and some 550,000 in just one day — is that possible? The letter of the project was not violated, but the spirit was.”

The row intensified when the man who acted as the advocate for Yaroslav in the show admitted that he had sent more than 1,000 text messages in support of his candidate, at a cost of £100. The average salary in Ukraine is about £150 per month.

Dmytro Tabachnyk, of the pro-Russian Party of Regions, acknowledged that an organised voting campaign had taken place, telling the Segodnya (Today) newspaper: “The Nationalists lacked just 600 generous banderivtsi [like me].”

The leader of the Party of Regions, Viktor Yanukovych, won a fraudulent presidential election in 2004 with Kremlin backing until public protests brought the pro-Western Viktor Yushchenko, who wants Ukraine to join Nato and the EU, to power.

Inter TV, which made the eight-month series after buying the rights from the BBC, has rejected allegations of ballot rigging.

Conflicting histories

Stepan Bandera was born in 1909 and in 1922 embarked on a successful career in Plast, the Ukrainian scouting movement

He was a member of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) from 1929, becoming chief of propaganda in 1931 and rising to head of the national executive by 1933

In 1934 he was given a life sentence for his part in the assassination of the Polish Minister of Internal Affairs.

He was released after the Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939 and returned to the Ukraine. There he formed a faction opposed to official OUN policy that became a separate organisation called the Banderites

After proclaiming Ukrainian statehood in 1941, he was imprisoned in Nazi concentration camps until 1944

In 1959, in Munich, Bandera was assassinated by the Russian agent Bogdan Stashinsky

Yaroslav the Wise was born in Kiev in 978. He became Grand Prince of Kiev in 1019 after fighting his half-brother, Sviatopolk I, for the throne

His reign of Kievan Rus lasted 35 years, during a time of regular military conflict. In this period the kingdom reached its greatest military power

In 1037 he initiated the building of St Sophia's Cathedral to commemorate his victory over a tribe of Pechenegs who had attacked Kiev. The building was finished in 1044

After a lifetime of fighting brothers and other family members, Yaroslav advised his seven sons to live peacefully with one another after his death

Source: Encyclopaedia of the Ukraine

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