Recently I've seen a lot of comments on the Ukrainian election that look like this one:

The US has been SYSTEMATICALLY favoring the weakening of Ukraine's economic ties with Russia since 1992. Is this in Ukraine's best interest, or does it just serve the geopolitical interest of the US in weakening Russia???

As I pointed out here, accusations that the US is being as pushy in Ukraine as Russia do not hold up. But there is an even more important mistake this commentator makes. The Ukrainian election is more about precedent than it is about presidents at this point.

You can look at my short catalogue of abuses to see all the ways in which the Ukrainian administration has systematically attempted to restrict Ukrainians' access to balanced information, stymie legitimate campaigning by the opposition, spread slanderous material about Yushchenko willy-nilly, and top all that off by committing clear fraud during the election.

The only groups that called the election fair were the Central Election Commission, which was composed mostly of Yanukovych supporters, the CIS observers, and such experts on democracy as Turkmenistan.  The CIS has also called the election in Belarus free and fair, and the CEC had two members resign rather than sign the protocol declaring Yanukovych the winner. Another retracted her signature and left on Friday, November 26th, saying she hadn't fully understood that there had been violations.

The election was clearly falsified. Ukrainians had the opportunity to vote for the candidate they chose, and they chose Yushchenko by a healthy margin. Yushchenko is not in power now because a number of administration officials cheated. Regardless of what policy Yushchenko will follow, his opponents have already proved themselves to be no democrats. If they can get away with this fraud, the precedent will be set for increasingly dictatorial behavior. The lesson Yanukovych will learn is that you can win by lying, cheating, and stealing, so long as you go all-out.

Russia would like to confirm him in that belief, for its own reasons. It seems to agree that a loss by Yanukovych would be a loss for its interests, the same way it viewed a loss by Shevardnadze in a similarly fraudulent election as a loss to its interests in Georgia. The US has consistently supported Ukrainian groups fighting for democracy and fighting to stop the election from being falsified. If this counts as SYSTEMATICALLY favoring the weakening of ties with Russia, then you're damn right it's in Ukraine's best interest.

(and one last thing: Ukrainians know what's what. A lot of the folks writing these kinds of articles dismiss the millions of people in Kyiv as one little faction. Look at this great little piece of cockle-warming goodness to show what the revolution feels like.)