It is Ukraine's misfortune to find itself slap bang in the middle of a new contest for influence in eastern Europe, writes Chris Stephen, in Kiev
Remember the Cold War, when superpowers competed for influence and treated nation-states like chess pieces? Well, that era is back, exploding into life over the tug-of-war between Moscow and the west about the fate of Ukraine.
With the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union more than a decade ago, the era of east-west competition was supposed to be finished with, replaced by a new concept, partnership.
For a while it worked: Moscow gave Washington a free hand to win the 1991 Iraq war, and when the Yugoslav crisis exploded, both worked together, in an admittedly limp effort to solve the conflict.
But then things started to go wrong. Moscow began to notice that, under the guise of partnership, its former satellite states, and even former pieces of the Soviet Union, were siding with the west.
In the late 1990s NATO expanded eastwards, with the Czechs, Hungarians and Poles all joining. Russia's sole ally in eastern Europe was Milosevic's Yugoslavia, but Moscow was powerless to help when NATO declared war over Kosovo.
Since then, the Russians have watched the eastward march of the west with alarm. Membership of the European Union has now come not just to the Poles, Czechs, Hungarians and Slovaks, but also to the three Baltic states, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which 15 years ago were run by Moscow.
NATO says its move into nations on Russia's fringe is merely an extension of its mutual security programme. But, asks Moscow, who - Russia apart - does Latvia, for instance, have in mind as a potential enemy? An invasion from Finland?
For Russia the next worry came after 9/11, when the US military opened bases across the former Soviet republics of central Asia, which Moscow had regarded as its "backyard". Another set of chess pieces, including Tajikistan, Kyrgyztan and Uzbekistan, seem about to go under the hammer, and where the US military goes, Russia worries that American oil companies are sure to follow.
Finally came the war in Iraq and, for the men in the Kremlin, proof positive that the US intends global domination.
Under the ailing Boris Yeltsin, and deeply in debt to western banks, Russia could not afford to play the Great Power Game. But now things have changed. Russia has a tough President, Vladimir Putin, untainted by corruption, along with a massive trade surplus.
Russia's economy has stabilised, then rocketed into the black, fuelled by high oil prices. Moscow has paid its debts to the west and has cash to spare. Its current account surplus is now nudging $100 billion.
With a firm grip on domestic politics, and money to play with, Putin has once more taken a seat at the Great Power table. Some call the Russian President's Big Idea in foreign policy a re-creation of the old Soviet Union. Some call it the rebirth of the older empire of the Russian tsars. Putin calls it simply a customs union, a free trade area to which he wants states once part of the USSR to sign up.
Supporters say the deal will enrich all, opening a huge free-trade space centred on Moscow, in a world increasingly dominated by global trading blocs. But opponents say the enterprise is the re-creation of Comecon, a Soviet-era trading system that saw Moscow dictate policy to its client states.
Nevertheless, last year Putin and the Presidents of Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine agreed in principle to form the union. But hopes of also getting Georgia in were dashed this time last year when, after demonstrations following contested election results, the liberal challenger, Mikhail Saakashvili, was installed as President, ousting the pro-Russian Eduard Shevardnadze.
Last April came success, when Ukraine's parliament ratified the customs union over a storm of protest from opponents inside the chamber and out on the streets of Kiev. Then, in the summer, ethnic Russians in their self-proclaimed republic of Trans Dniestr, in Moldova, cut road and rail links with the rest of the country and put armed guards on roadblocks.
Moscow gave support to the separatists. The European Union gave half-hearted support to the Moldovan authorities. The Great Power game had another fault-line.
In October Alexander Lukashenko, the no-nonsense President of Belarus, secured an overwhelming victory in a referendum to allow him to stand for a third term in office. Moscow congratulated him on a fair victory. The west criticised the vote as rigged.
And then came Ukraine. The strength and organisation of protesters has taken the west by surprise, but opposition figures say they are organised for a reason. Not only do they fear that allowing one rigged election will mean the end of democracy. They also fear that, once in the customs union, something the new government would have signed up to, their economy would be so enmeshed with Russia that EU membership would no longer be possible.
The build-up to the vote saw Putin make high-profile visits to support the Prime Minister, Victor Yanukovich; the Ukrainians even changing the date of the annual Army Day parade so it came just before the first round of voting.
Ukraine's polling day was dominated by one question - which direction the country would face. Victor Yushchenko wanted it facing westwards, Yanukovich towards Russia, and neither candidate minced his words.
Exit polls showed victory for Yushchenko; official results gave it to Yanukovich; international monitors said the difference was down to fraud and a new front had opened between Moscow and the west. Putin immediately congratulated Yanukovich on a free and fair election, and the EU just as quickly denounced the whole thing as a fraud.
But, unlike the Belarussian vote, which disappeared as an issue with the failure of street protests to get going, the Ukraine election has exploded into a major foreign-policy challenge.
It has come with the west already clashing with Russia over both the war in Chechnya and the Kremlin's pursuit of the Yukos oil company in prosecutions Europeans said were politically motivated.
Moscow, for its part, is furious that Britain and Denmark are giving asylum to Chechen rebel leaders it regards as terrorists. And EU criticism of Moscow's human rights record was regarded by the Kremlin as straight humiliation, particularly after Chechen rebels killed 300 children in Beslan in September.
A rare bright spot came last month when Moscow joined the Kyoto Protocol on global pollution, a decision that allows the protocol to become law despite opposition from the United States.
But one swallow does not make a summer. At their summit meeting this week, Russia and the European Union papered over the cracks, announcing joint support for Ukraine's election results to be reviewed by the Supreme Court.
This is a cosmetic exercise. The fallout from the Ukraine election, whichever way it goes, will see the end of the idea of an east-west partnership, and return to the older era of competition.
To see this as a new Cold War is misleading. There is no ideological dimension to this new scramble for influence across eastern Europe. Instead, this is a return to the game of Great Power chess played by the Soviets and the capitalists, and by the tsar and Great Powers before him. It is Ukraine's misfortune to find itself slap bang in the middle.