By Yuri Kulikov and Natalya Zinets
KIEV (Reuters) - Ukraine faces a February 7 run-off vote between opposition leader Viktor Yanukovich and populist Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko after a presidential election produced no outright winner, official results showed Monday.
The election will define how Ukraine, a former Soviet republic of 46 million people wedged between the European Union and Russia, handles relations with its powerful neighbours, and may help unblock frozen IMF aid for its ailing economy.
With more than 80 percent of the ballots counted from Sunday's poll, Yanukovich had a strong lead with 35.76 percent, well under the more than 50 percent needed for outright victory, the Central Election Commission said. Tymoshenko had 24.72 percent.
The results set up what could be a close February 7 contest, though analysts say Tymoshenko should pick up more votes from defeated first round candidates, while Yanukovich will have to fight hard to extend his appeal beyond his support base in the Russian-speaking east of the country.
Tymoshenko, 49, helped lead the pro-Western Orange Revolution against Yanukovich's rigged 2004 presidential election victory and is most popular in the European-leaning west of the country.
She hailed the voting pattern as proof that Yanukovich, a 59-year-old former mechanic, had no chance in the second round on February 7 and called for talks with eliminated candidates.
"As of today I am ready for talks so that we can move forward with uniting the democratic forces," she told reporters Sunday.
Traders of the hryvnia currency took the election in their stride and said the market would be calm because the results of the poll were expected. A holiday in the United States would also dampen the volume of trades, dealers said.
The hryvnia was unchanged from Friday's level of 8.075-8.175/$. The central bank offered to sell dollars on Monday -- as it had done last week -- at 8.01/$.
Tymoshenko, meanwhile, rushed to Luhansk in the east of the country after oxygen tanks exploded in a hospital, her press service said. Five people were killed in the blast, emergency officials said.
All eyes were on the team of international election monitors, including a large party from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which was to hand down its verdict on the poll later Monday.
Tymoshenko, before the poll, had accused the Yanukovich camp of preparing large-scale fraud. The Central Election Commission (CEC) said it had received reports of minor irregularities but these would not have a significant impact on the result.
RIVALS COOL ON SUPPORT
Two candidates who came third and fourth, former central bank chief Sergey Tigipko and former parliament speaker Arseniy Yatsenyuk, said they would not come out in support of any candidate in the second round.
An aide to Tymoshenko, who amassed a fortune in her years in the gas industry, said however that her camp hoped to meet Tigipko -- who has so far won 13.08 percent of the vote -- in the next few days.
Both leading candidates have pledged to seek better relations with neighbouring energy supplier Russia, in part to avoid the spats of recent years which led to supply cut-offs affecting parts of Europe.
Voters punished incumbent President Viktor Yushchenko, one of the architects of the Orange Revolution, for the country's political in-fighting. Election results gave him around 5-6 per cent.
Yanukovich's Party of the Regions is allied to the Kremlin's United Russia party but he has been careful to avoid appearing as Moscow's stooge this time around.
He has called for a strong, independent Ukraine following a neutral path and not joining NATO or any other bloc. He attacked Yushchenko for excessively confrontational policies towards Russia, and says Ukraine's real enemy is poverty.
He was tarnished by a scandal in 2004, when he initially claimed victory in an election tainted by allegations of fraud and was subsequently swept aside by the Orange Revolution that brought Yushchenko to power.
Although Tymoshenko initially had stormy relations with Russia, she has tried to patch up her links with the Kremlin of late.
(Additional reporting by Natalya Zinets, Yuri Kulikov and Pavel Polityuk; writing by Richard Balmforth, Michael Stott and Dmitry Solovyov, editing by Mark Trevelyan)
