Is Ukraine heading back into the old fold?

Moscow is so confident that relations with Ukraine will improve after this weekend’s presidential elections that it won’t wait for an expected runoff in three weeks to fill its long-vacant ambassadorship in Kiev. Mikhail Zurabov is expecting to be dispatched to Kiev any day now.
Ties sank to new lows in August when President Dmitry Medvedev announced that he would not send the newly appointed ambassador to Ukraine while President Viktor Yushchenko remained in office; Yushchenko is almost certain to be voted out of office in the election on Sunday.
The Kremlin has made no secret that it hopes that the pro-Russian candidate Viktor Yanukovych takes the presidency. A run-off between him and Yulia Tymoshenko is expected to take place on February 7th.
President Medvedev stated last month that Ukraine’s elections are an internal matter. “Russia does not have and cannot have its own candidate in the presidential election in Ukraine because this is an independent country whose leader can only be elected by its citizens,” he said. His comments are in sharp contrast to Ukraine’s presidential election five years ago, when the Kremlin strongly supported Yanukovych and even congratulated him on his victory in a fraudulent vote that was later overturned. It is also widely believed that the Kremlin was behind an attempt to assassinate Viktor Yushchenko by poisoning him before the election.
The election of Yanukovych will effectively end speculation over the possibility of Ukrainian entry into NATO: he has categorically ruled this out.
Bickering between different political factions, something of a tradition in Ukrainian politics, has helped to ensure a level of instability that has dissuaded many western governments, including the EU, from making serious attempts at integration. Russia has been pleased to encourage this isolation, which has left Kiev with no choice but to heal its rifts with Moscow. This rapprochement is actually likely to prove popular in Brussels, which would welcome increased stability on its eastern borders: the gas shut-offs of recent years exposed the EU as lacking in coherence, and impotent in even the lowest level of conflict. A Common European energy policy, outside of the EU structures, could have included Ukraine - and indeed Turkey - but the Commission seemed reluctant to consider anything that did not hand total competence to the Union. This will probably come back to haunt them.
Vladimir Putin, who is generally regarded as having provoked the Orange Revolution of 2004 through his interference, will also benefit hugely from the return of Ukraine into the political fold. Whichever of the two serious candidates wins the presidency, his own campaign to regain the presidency of Russia in 2012 will be given a great boost.
Let us hope that whatever happens, however, that the greatest beneficieries of all will be the Ukrainian people.