IZMAIL, Ukraine — His aides have worked long and hard to soften the image of Prime Minister Yanukovych and cast him as a moderate. But the burly 57-year-old former electrician and metal worker keeps straying off message.

During the campaign for Sunday’s parliamentary elections, Mr. Yanukovych used a barnyard epithet to describe his country’s politics, and called his main female opponent a “cow on ice.”

But his supporters love him in spite of — or perhaps because of — these outbursts, and he could keep his job in a vote seen likely to split among three parties and leave Ukraine with a coalition government.

The square-jawed politician was widely seen as the villain of the 2004 Orange Revolution — the Kremlin’s man in a country still haunted by its Soviet past. He won a presidential election, but hundreds of thousands people jammed Kiev’s streets for weeks to protest electoral fraud. A court later ruled the vote was rigged, and ordered a revote, which was won by his Western-leaning foe, Viktor Yushchenko.

But instead of vanishing from the scene, grim, tough-talking Mr. Yanukovych returned as a premier last year, capitalizing on the widespread disillusionment with Mr. Yushchenko’s failure to make good on his promises of reform. He has sought to cast himself as a smiling, conciliatory man who praises democracy, courts the West and is now the most popular politician in the nation of 47 million.

On occasion, though, Mr. Yanukovych’s discipline slips and the bare-knuckles politician emerges. At a rally in the southern city of Izmail, he bashed his main political opponent, Yulia Tymoshenko, a former prime minister and ice skating enthusiast whose hallmark is her strikingly braided blond hair.

“As a healthy man I feel normal about her, she’s a normal woman, but as a prime minister she is a cow on ice,” Mr. Yanukovych said to a roar of approval.

“I feel sorry for such a politician and the people who emit such aggression,” Ms. Tymoshenko shot back. “I wouldn’t want anybody to call Yanukovych’s wife a cow on ice.”

At the Izmail rally, admirers stretched out their arms for a handshake, many in tears as they clutched his portrait and chanted his name. “How many beautiful women there are here,” Mr. Yanukovych said, to more cheers.

“He is a simple man, he is one of us,” said Aloyona Ramaliyskaya, 38, who came with two of her four daughters. “He does whatever he promises.”

During Mr. Yanukovych’s year in power, the economy has grown by some 7 percent, he has raised wages and pensions, and he has sought to improve ties with Russia.

At the same time, Ukraine’s language divide, a big factor in the Orange Revolution, is less acutely felt in this election campaign, and Mr. Yanukovych, a native Russian speaker, has brushed up on his Ukrainian.

Mr. Yanukovych draws most of his support from the Russian-speaking East and South, where voters favor close ties with Russia, in contrast to the Ukrainian-speaking center and West, which wants quick integration into the European Union and NATO.