Their political marriage swept them to power on a wave of popular support in the Orange Revolution. Now the bitter divorce between the couple who were nicknamed Beauty and the Beast threatens to tear Ukraine apart.

Viktor Yushchenko, the President, and Yuliya Tymoshenko, the Prime Minister, are waging war on each other as the economy in Ukraine teeters on the brink of disaster. Each side blamed the other’s lust for power for the split in the pro-Western coalition that led Mr Yushchenko to call parliamentary elections in December, the third in less than three years.

Mrs Tymoshenko sought to avoid an election yesterday by urging political opponents in parliament to join her in a “grand coalition” to confront the financial crisis. Her plea for reconciliation fell on deaf ears because most parties stayed away.

However, Mr Yushchenko acknowledged the depth of the financial crisis when he delayed the disputed polls for a week and recalled parliament to enact emergency measures. Elections will now be held on December 14. Allies and enemies said that Mr Yushchenko was determined to hold the election to oust Mrs Tymoshenko as Prime Minister and prevent her from using the office to challenge him for the presidency next year. He has accused her of placing “personal interests over national ones” and said that the Orange alliance was destroyed by her “hunger for power”.

Government ministers were equally vicious about the President. Hryhoriy Nemyria, the Vice-Prime Minister and a key aide to Mrs Tymoshenko, told The Times: “The desire to get rid of Yuliya is so strong that it’s basically at the top of the President’s agenda and it doesn’t matter what will happen with Ukraine.”

Ukraine has had a series of political crises since the 2004 revolution. In the latest, the party supporting Mr Yushchenko pulled out of the coalition Government with Mrs Tymoshenko.

Mr Nemyria claimed that the President was seeking to create an unstable parliament by calling new elections so that he would be in control of Ukraine during the presidential contest against Mrs Tymoshenko, who is ahead of him in opinion polls. “This is a classic example when personal survival and political future demeans all rational behaviour,” he said.

Mrs Tymoshenko won a court order to block the decree to hold an election but Mr Yushchenko fired the judge and declared the ruling invalid. Mrs Tymoshenko withdrew her legal challenge and offered to accept any condition set down by the President if he cancelled the election. He refused.

A team from the International Monetary Fund is in Ukraine while it negotiates a loan of up to $14 billion (£8 billion) to support the banking system and prevent a run on the currency, the hryvnia. The central bank has already placed restrictions on Ukrainians making withdrawals from deposit accounts. Its reserves of $37.5 billion are enough to cover less than four months of imports.

Mrs Tymoshenko appeared on television on Sunday to warn Ukrainians that holding an election during the financial crisis would destroy the country. She said that the Government should continue to work until the crisis had passed “and after that you can have any elections you like”.

Some analysts argued, however, that Mrs Tymoshenko is playing up the economic threat to buy time and position herself favourably for the presidential battle.

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