[mova] Yushchenko's command of Russian, as well as characteristics of his Ukrainian

[Max Pyziur]

Greetings,

On January 24th Yushchenko traveled to Moscow to meet with Vladimir Putin.
 After their meeting, they held a joint news conference, standing
side-by-side (if anyone wants a copy of a video file of the news
conference I can email it to you - 11 MBs).  During the conference I
couldn't help noticing a qualitative difference between Putin's Russian
and that of Yushchenko's.  Not being at all fluent in Russian and just
resorting to some heuristics to comprehend it, I understand that Russian
as spoken in St. Petersburg is considered to be the de facto standard
(much as the English spoken by middle-class Chicagoans is taken to be the
example of the purest variant of American English).  I would assume then,
that Putin's speech would be considered to fall in line with the standard.

However, I noticed that Yushchenko's use of Russian (unlike his Ukrainian
which strikes me as flowing very easily) was somewhat halting and stilted
by comparison to Putin's.  Could someone with a better knowledge and
understanding of both Russian and Ukrainian comment Yushchenko's
knowledge/usage of Russian?

Further, are there aspects of Yushchenko's Ukrainian important to take
note - does he have any sort of notable social-class or regional accent? 
Does he resort to particular class or region-specific phrases or terms? 
(I always notice the usage of "shcho" coming out as "s'o", but can't
really assign any sort significance to it).


Much thanks.


Max Pyziur
pyz at brama.com