"This is better than sex!" one young woman shrieked, to the apparent chagrin of her boyfriend, as fireworks exploded over Kiev's Independence Square as the game wound up.

Ukraine, who suffered a shock 4-0 trouncing at the hands of Spain in their opening match last week, had to win Monday's contest to have a chance of advancing from their Group H to the next round.

The several thousand people gathered in the capital's central square despite drizzling rain to watch the match erupted in a virtual roar of cheers at the end of the match.

"Ukraine! Ukraine!" chanted the crowd, waving Ukrainian flags, decked out in the yellow and blue of the standard, hugging and dancing.

"We're the best, don't you see," yelled Helen, a university student.

Passing cars joined in the party, honking their horns. One ambulance driver flashed a victory sign as he sped by.

Fans watched the crucial match on screens set up in several cities throughout the ex-Soviet nation. In the eastern city of Dnipropetrovsk, some 3,000 fans watched the game and traffic was blocked in the central square.

Screens were also set up in Lviv in the west, Odessa in the south and Kharkiv in the east.

The country's bickering politicians, struggling to form a governing coalition three months after a parliamentary election, were quick to jump on the bandwagon.

"It's a knock-you-off-your-feet result," Roman Bezsmertnyi, a top official in President Viktor Yushchenko's Our Ukraine bloc said.

"Today politicians can learn from footballers on how to work toward such a result," Interfax quoted him as saying.

"Finally football has united the country," Pyotr Poroshenko, another Our Ukraine official, said.