For Rinat Akhmetov, the coal and steel baron who is believed to be Ukraine's richest man, the declining prospects that his long-time ally Viktor Yanukovich will become president have been hard to accept.

Dressed casually in cream-coloured jeans and a wool sweater, Mr Akhmetov spoke to the FT on Sunday in the piano bar of his new Donetsk luxury hotel, the Donbass Palace, as thousands of black-jacketed, working-class Yanukovich supporters rallied in a nearby square. Speakers at the rally threatened to secede, along with other eastern and southern regions, unless Mr Yanukovich was instated as president - a tall order given the hundreds of thousands rallying in the capital Kiev calling for the presidency to be handed to his challenger, Viktor Yushchenko.