The woman who could be Ukraine’s next president believes she's Evita. Literally, Evita. How scared should the world be?

KIEV–Like many Ukrainian politicians, prime minister and presidential candidate Yulia Tymoshenko relies on fortune-tellers and TV psychics to bolster her embattled spirit. Several years ago, one such mystical specialist compared birth years, personality types, and other intimate details to confirm what Tymoshenko had suspected since the 1996 release of the movie Evita.

“She was told she is the reincarnation of Eva Perón,” says Dmitry Vydrin, who was Tymoshenko’s close adviser for nearly a decade. “And she believes it. She admits it in closed circles. She copies her consciously and subconsciously.” There's the elaborate, kaleidoscopic wardrobe; the bleached up-do; the theatrical mannerisms; the way the public rustles whenever she appears. “It's that way of flirting with the public, of addressing them as ‘my loved ones,'” Vydrin says. And there are the men whom the two women used to get out of poverty, but then brightly eclipsed. For Evita, it was her husband, Argentine President Juan Perón; for Tymoshenko, it was a string of well-connected men, starting with her father-in-law and ending with Ukraine's current president and hero of the 2004 Orange Revolution, Viktor Yushchenko.

But, while Evita never held office, Tymoshenko is within striking distance of her country's presidency. She may be polling behind front-runner Viktor Yanukovich (who lost in 2004), but observers say she is likely to gain many of the votes scattered among 16 other candidates who will fall away after the first round of voting on January 17. She'll then face the wooden, gaffe-prone Yanukovich, who twice did jail time for assault and theft, and many observers think she can take him.

But, if she wins, what can Ukraine–and the world–expect from this Soviet-bloc Evita? With Ukraine teetering on the geopolitical fulcrum between Russia and the West, it's no small question: If Tymoshenko wins, her party will control all three branches of government. Gas negotiations with Moscow? Tymoshenko will decide. NATO ascension? Ditto, that.

Tymoshenko’s authoritarian proclivities are well-known–and feared–among the country's elite, and they’ve earned her comparisons to another political leader: Vladimir Putin. Many observers say it's chilling to consider what her leadership could mean for the green shoots of Ukrainian democracy. “I am really very scared,” Vydrin told me. (Once her image-maker and close friend, Vydrin was forced out of Tymoshenko’s political party in 2006. He is now Yushchenko’s deputy security minister, but his wife is still friends with Tymoshenko.) “You can’t stop her in any normal political way. You can’t beat her on TV, you can’t out-argue her on the town square. If she had more biological time on earth, she’d become president of the Ukraine, president of the EU, president of the U.S. The only thing that can stop her is Tymoshenko herself.”