Ok, so there is an argument out there that Russia and the US are both pushing Ukraine, with equal force, from different directions. My buddy John at postmodernclog.com responds to one icky example from Johnathan Steele at the Guardian by reminding us that there are 48 million Ukrainians who also tend to influence the direction of their country. (my two cents on the Steele article - calling old Ukrainian inspirational songs "nationalistic and secessionist songs from the anti-semitic years of the second world war" is like me calling "God Rest Ye Merry Gentleman" a song of religious dread from the crushing burden of working class poverty years in Britain. If you're going to try to tar the whole opposition as Jew-haters, but you don't have any material from the crowds or from the slogans, I suppose you have to resort to tenuous historical parallels, huh? But anyway, I've already nailed Steele here)

This posting is a catalogue of all the actions by the US and Russia that I can think of right now so you can compare and contrast for yourself.

1a) Putin has visited Ukraine 3 times since September, and had Yanukovych out to see him at least once. Putin visited once three days before round one for a veterans' day parade that was moved up a week and a half from veterans' day for unexplained reasons. (Aside from Putin, Yanukovych, and Lukashenko, there were few people in Kyiv able to see the Nov 6th Parade on Oct 28th - all pedestrians without identification were turned back by police and the central Metro station was closed.) Putin came again a week before round two.

1b) Bush has never visited Ukraine. In the lead up to the election, a number of current and former top US politicians visited Kyiv, including the elder George Bush, Wesley Clark, Henry Kissenger, and Donald Rumsfeld. All visited on the invitation of the current President's son-in-law, and pro-administration deputy, Victor Pinchuk. They repeated the statements of the US Congress (see 2b) calling for free and fair elections, and warning of consequences if elections are not free and fair. Senator McCain on behalf of IRI and Former Secretary of State Madelein Albright on behalf of NDI gave similar warnings about consequences, and suggested visa restrictions for Ukrainian officials found to have been complicit in fraud. The Russia Club, a group initiated by Yanukovych, Putin's Chief-of-Staff Medvedev, and Moscow spin doctor Gleb Pavlovsky, has accused the United States of meddling in Ukraine's internal affairs and cited Kissenger's visit as an example.

2a) Putin personally spoke well of Yanukovych on three nationwide Ukrainian channels during his visit to Ukraine before round one, saying: "The Yanukovych government managed to achieve not only a high pace of growth . . . It managed at the same time to concentrate financial resources on solving the main social tasks such as increasing pensions". [Financial Times] (Yanukovych doubled pensions, quintupling the budget, in a non-repeating "bonus" a month before round one of the election)

2b) George Bush said nice things about liberty in honor of an anniversary day at the Taras Shevchenko monument in Washington in July. The US Congress voted for resolutions in support of free and fair elections.  Later individual politicians called for fair and transparent election, as stated above. Later Bush sent Senator Richard Lugar to observer the second round "not to be an advocate of either of the candidates, but to stress the need for a free and transparent process."

3a) The opposition claims that half of the $600 million Yanukovych spent on his campaign came from Russia, a large percentage of it from the state oil company Gazprom.

3b) No credible accusations have come from Russia about involvement of US government or business financing in Yushchenko's campaign. In fact, I haven't heard any such accusations at all, even from the Russian Club.