Thousands of Ukrainians will congregate in the main square of Kiev today to celebrate the first anniversary of the bloodless Orange Revolution that transformed the country and caught the world's imagination last year.

Tents, scarves, ribbons and banners, all in orange, will fill the Maidan, the square where protesters remained for 17 days to defy the fraudulent re-election of Viktor Yanukovich and call for fresh elections that gave power to the reformist candidate, Viktor Yushchenko.

President Yushchenko will address the crowd at 8pm local time (1800 GMT) after a series of speeches from protesters and performances by Ukraine's leading pop groups, who sang their way through last year's demonstrations.

"I am certain that on November 22 we will all gather on the Maidan," Mr Yushchenko said on Saturday in his weekly radio address. "It is our day. We showed the world that Ukrainians are a wise nation that is capable of vanquishing dictators without blood or victims."

Organisers expect hundreds of thousands of people to take part in the rally, said Roman Bezsmertnyi, the deputy prime minister who was known as the "Commandant of Maidan" for running the protests. Hundreds of police, conspicuous by their absence last year, will keep order.

The festivities come at a time when much of last winter's euphoria has dissipated. The People's Power coalition that was carried to power in the re-run elections has broken up, Ukraine's economic growth has slowed and Mr Yushchenko is accused of turning a blind eye to corruption and incompetence among his party loyalists.

The most damaging crisis came in September, when a government whistleblower alleged widespread corruption in Mr Yushchenko's administration. The President responded by firing his entire Cabinet, including his Prime Minister, Yulia Tymoshenko, who was dubbed the "Orange Princess" after her leading role in last year's revolution.

Ms Tymoshenko, still a widely popular figure and scheduled to speak this evening, said that her alliance with Mr Yushchenko was "dissolved" and promised to run in next year's parliamentary elections.

The fracturing of the orange coalition has forced Mr Yushchenko to seek parliamentary support from the Regions Party of Mr Yanukovich, the former president who still enjoys solid approval in the industrialised, Russian-oriented east of the country.

Mr Yushchenko even agreed to drop the official investigation of last year's electoral fraud in return for Mr Yanukovich's backing of the ratification of his new Prime Minister, Yuriy Yekhanurov, a Russian-born economist. In recent polls, Mr Yushchenko trailed both Mr Yanukovich and Ms Tymoshenko.

"I am certain that we haven’t blown our chance," Yuri Lutsenko, the Interior Minister, said in a recent interview about the state of Ukraine. "We’re just turning it into reality painfully slowly."

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