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WASHINGTON - The Bush administration expects a cleaner election today in Ukraine and while it professes to be above the contest for president, it is hoping for a pro-Western outcome.
That would mean a victory for Viktor Yushchenko and his Orange Revolution, which is pledged to fight corruption and orient Ukraine toward the West.
His opponent in the runoff, Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, has had the support of Russia, with President Vladimir Putin campaigning for him.
"The question is whether the United States will have a friendly or hostile Ukraine," said Anders Aslund, of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "From Putin's point of view, democracy in Ukraine is a threat to authoritarianism in Russia."
And an authoritarian Ukraine would be a weak country that could not deal with the West, said the director of Carnegie's Russian and Eurasian program.
Still, Aslund, who spent a week in Ukraine earlier this month, said Thursday that if Yushchenko wins, and the polls suggest he will, Ukraine would withdraw its 1,650 troops from Iraq.
The contest today was ordered by Ukraine's Supreme Court after the court voided a Nov. 21 runoff because of massive fraud.
The Bush administration had called for an investigation, joining with European and other critics of the way the campaign was conducted. Secretary of State Colin Powell telephoned President Leonid Kuchma last month and told him it was important to keep the crisis-ridden country intact. State Department officials hinted at cuts in U.S. aid to Ukraine, which totaled $58-million over the last three years.
The contest became an issue in U.S.-Russian relations. The Bush administration chided Russia for assisting Yanukovych while Putin accused the United States of meddling in Ukrainian politics.
Dimitri Simes, president of the Nixon Center, said he assumed Yushchenko would win today "and it's probably for the better."
"Not only will it reflect the will of the Ukrainians, but he is the better candidate for Ukraine, for the United States and, if he plays his cards right, for Ukraine's relationship with Russia," Simes said.
The U.S. interest is free choice in Ukraine in a way that would not lead to separatist movements or spoil Ukraine's relationship with Russia, Simes said.
Russia is subsidizing 50-million Ukrainians with cheap energy, and it is in the U.S. interest not to "humiliate Russians just for the fun of it," Simes said.
In fact, Simes suggested accusations of Russian involvement in the Ukrainian election were exaggerated.
"I don't believe this was a serious exercise of neoimperialism," he said.
There were a lot of political consultants working in Ukraine, including Americans, he said.
But Radek Sikorsi, director of the new Atlantic Initiative at the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington think tank, said Yanukovych wants to integrate Ukraine with Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan while Yushchenko says he wants to integrate with the NATO military alliance and the European Union.
"So our club of free market democracies would grow if Mr. Yushchenko should win," the former Polish deputy foreign minister said.
"Overall, the Bush administration has been prodemocracy in Ukraine without being provocative toward Russia," Sikorski said.
"This country has a general interest in countries adopting free markets and democratic principles and it is good if the Ukrainians make their own democratic choice in this election," he said Thursday.
He also praised the administration for synchronizing its call for election reform with European governments and said, "We should try it more often."