U.S. should maintain relations with Ukraine

Opinion: February 16, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

Kansas City Star: Ukraine’s Orange Revolution looks to be dying in the same manner in which it was born: With a Western-leaning candidate claiming vote fraud after a three- percentage-point victory for pro-Russia candidate Viktor Yanukovych.

The problem Yulia Tymoshenko will have in making a case that she was robbed of the election is that international observers and exit polls seem to firmly support the results.

That wasn’t true in 2004 when she helped orchestrate an election protest that brought hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians to the streets, with cries of vote fraud coming from all corners of the globe.

A victory?

This time, the results show 49 percent for Yanukovych to 45.5 percent for Tymoshenko. International vote observers issued a statement on the results: “For everyone in Ukraine, this election was a victory.” The United States and the European Union have praised the election process, even though the results are not in their best interests.

Ukraine remains an important ally, but it appears clear that it will reorient toward Moscow in the coming years. Russians have even referred to Yanukovych pushing a “reset button” after six “lost” years. Still, Ukraine is strategically important to the United States.