That speech, and one in Germany's Bundestag a month earlier, were part of a post-revolutionary victory lap after the massive public protests of the Orange Revolution propelled Yushchenko into the Ukrainian presidency -- and reduced his Moscow-backed rival, Viktor Yanukovych, to political ignominy.

Now Yushchenko and Yanukovych are once again locking horns.

This time, however, Yanukovych is prime minister and head of the lynchpin party in parliament's ruling coalition. And the cheers of Western support for Yushchenko? Nowhere to be heard.

"Any political questions in Ukraine need to be resolved by the Ukraine government," said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack, responding to Yushchenko's dissolution of the Verkhovna Rada following the defection of opposition lawmakers to the coalition.

And in Brussels, Adrian Severin, a member of the EU-Ukraine Parliamentary Cooperation Committee, said this time around, Europe was putting its support behind "values," rather than "people."

Yushchenko himself appears to acknowledge he cannot turn to the West for support on this battle. In an interview with RFE/RL on April 11, the president said Ukrainians must solve the current crisis "by themselves."

Orange Letdown

Some observers say many in the West have been disappointed by the inability of the Orange Revolution leaders to capitalize on their powerful public mandate and effectively lead the country down a new progressive path.

"The lethargy that you see, the hesitancy, or even the frustration on the part of Brussels and Washington has to do with the degree to which the Orange Revolution itself collapsed or disintegrated or eroded," says Robert Legvold, a professor at New York's Columbia University who specializes in post-Soviet politics.

Just months after the Orange Revolution, Yushchenko and his charismatic political ally, Yuliya Tymoshenko, had been reduced to constant bickering. By September 2005, Yushchenko removed Tymoshenko from her prime ministerial post. That move split the pro-Western Orange forces and opened the door for Yanukovych's political comeback and the victory of his Party of Regions in March 2006 parliamentary elections.

After months of haggling, Yushchenko, Tymoshenko, and Socialist Party leader Oleksandr Moroz appeared to revive the Orange forces and form a ruling coalition that would have returned Tymoshenko to the prime ministerial post.

But in the end, Moroz defected and instead formed a coalition with Party of Regions and the Communists. By August 2006, it was Yanukovych, and not Tymoshenko, who was confirmed as prime minister.

Yushchenko (right) with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in Kyiv in December 2005 (epa)"The Orange Revolution alliance quarreled so much, it didn't have the sort of inner dynamism to create a government of its own," said Eugeniusz Smolar of the Warsaw-based Center for International Relations, who said he watched the months of haggling with a mixture of "sympathy and horror."

The fighting, he said, "destroyed, on the one hand, the cohesion -- and, on the other hand, some of the support -- of the population toward the government."

Divided Loyalty

Some analysts and politicians suggest the West could have done more to support pro-European forces in Ukraine by expediting the country's bid to join Western institutions like the World Trade Organization, the European Union, and NATO.

Brussels, which acknowledges expansion fatigue, has been firm in its refusal to bolster Ukraine's hopes of membership. But U.S. President Bush on April 10 signed legislation backing NATO membership for five countries, including Ukraine.

The fact remains, however, that Ukraine's eastern regions remain largely loyal to Russia, which adamantly opposes NATO expansion. As a result, Ukraine itself is deeply divided over whether it wants to join the EU or NATO. Some polls have indicated that most Ukrainians would reject membership in either if the issue was put to a referendum.

"There is a quite a large group of public opinion in Ukraine that is not terribly interested in joining the European Union, understanding that it has an important economic, social, and cultural interest in staying close to Russia," says Smolar.

So did the West fail, or Ukraine? "It's a complex situation," Smolar says. "I believe that the Ukrainian public and the Ukrainian elite didn't do enough. Whether the West could do more... I believe it could do more, but I am not sure it could do much more."

Wider Implications

Ukraine's inconstancy regarding the West may prove an inconvenience elsewhere in the former Soviet Union -- particularly in Georgia, whose NATO bid also got U.S. President Bush's blessing this week.

Anti-NATO protests in Ukraine last month (TASS)Georgia kicked off the wave of colored revolutions with its 2003 Rose Revolution, and President Mikheil Saakashvili has traditionally kept close ties with Yushchenko. But Legvold at Columbia University says Georgia's own Western ambitions may be hampered by the ongoing Ukrainian stalemate.

"I don't see any prospect that Georgia can be considered for NATO membership -- even if it seems in some fashion more qualified -- until the Ukrainian issue is settled," he says. "You can't jump over Ukraine and address the Georgian question separately."

Ultimately, U.S. and EU support for Yushchenko and Ukraine's pro-Western forces may also be muted because the current composition of the Ukrainian government is the product of elections that were universally judged to be among the fairest and cleanest in post-Soviet Ukraine.

The Orange Revolution had a clear villain in Yanukovych, whose backers blatantly falsified election results. This time around, he is the legitimate head of government and leads the most popular party in the country.

Marek Siwiec, deputy chairman of the European Parliament, said on April 11 that Yushchenko can no longer expect the unequivocal Western support he enjoyed in 2004.

"All parties have a legal democratic mandate now," Siwiec said. And that makes a "huge difference."

On another Front

He said he could participate in the ballot even if the Constitutional Court rules against Yushchenko, provided all participants in the political process agree.

Yanukovych had previously said he would agree to the poll only if an early presidential election was held simultaneously.

Yanukovych and his allies have asked the Constitutional Court to examine the legality of Yushchenko's April 2 decree to dissolve parliament and call early elections.

Elections Question

In an interview with RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service on April 11, President Viktor Yushchenko said the only democratic way to resolve the political crisis in his country is by holding new elections.

But speaking today at a news conference in Kyiv, Yushchenko indicated he was prepared to allow for more time before the elections, slated for May 27.

Speaking to RFE/RL, Yushchenko assured that dialogue between all forces in the dispute is continuing.

"I think the difference is that we are constantly consulting. There is an active dialogue. We have a regular dialogue with all the institutions of power. There is no feeling of isolation on the part of the parliament, the government, or the presidency as far as communication or dialogue is concerned," Yushchenko said.

Ukraine's Constitutional Court is due to start hearings into the decree's legality on April 17, although five out of 18 judges are refusing to consider the case, citing political pressure.

Speaking at a press conference today, Yushchenko called on Constitutional Court judges to be courageous and said that a court decision was a matter of principle for 48 million Ukrainians.

International Efforts

Meanwhile, international diplomatic efforts to solve the crisis are under way.

Russian and Polish diplomats were in the capital to discuss with Ukrainian government officials ways of resolving the crisis.

And the European Parliament's vice president, Marek Siwiec, held a news conference in Brussels today following a fact-finding mission in the Ukrainian capital.

But Yushchenko said he is confident that Ukrainians could resolve the crisis "by themselves":

"We should settle these internal problems through political means. Ukrainians should go through this by themselves because this [experience] is not something that you can borrow from someone else or receive it as a gift from someone," Yushchenko said.

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But a member of a Russian State Duma delegation visiting Ukraine, Duma Deputy Aleksandr Krutov, denied today that Russia was interfering in Ukrainian politics.

The Duma's statement "is not interference in [Ukraine's] internal affairs. It is an assessment of the Ukrainian president's decree," Krutov said. "Anybody, any organization, any country may give their assessment to any legal act in any country. The State Duma has given its own assessment and it is fully entitled to do so."

Old Ties

Events in Ukraine have provoked strong feelings among many Russians.

Russian television news programs have devoted hours of airtime to the current crisis in Ukraine. The escalating row has dominated the news and the front pages of most of the newspapers in Russia for several days.

Yevgeny Volk, the director of the Moscow branch of the Washington-based Heritage Foundation, says Russia and Ukraine are bound together.

"The idea of Ukraine becoming a completely independent state is very hard for Russians to understand," Volk says.

"It always used to be that when something happened in Ukraine, we regarded it as something that was happening to us. We'd watch it with a great deal of attention. And of course the question of Ukraine joining the West, becoming a member of NATO or the European Union -- this is the worst imaginable nightmare for Russian public opinion."

Winter Of Orange

Three winters ago, when demonstrators wearing orange jackets took to the streets in Kyiv to contest fraudulent elections, they had the strong support of Washington and the European Union. The results of the election were overturned and the Western-leaning Yushchenko came to power in what became known as the Orange Revolution.

But three years later, there are signs that the West's support for Ukraine has waned.

Western countries supported Orange forces in Ukraine in 2004 Sam Greene, a political researcher at the Carnegie Moscow Center, says things look different now.

"Unfortunately, attention spans, particularly in Washington -- but I think not only in Washington -- I think are sometimes shorter than we would like them to be, and I think that interest has moved on. I think we saw similar dynamics probably in Georgia and probably in Kyrgyzstan," Greene says.

But has the void left by the Western governments that supported the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, the Rose Revolution in Georgia, and the Tulip Revolution in Kyrgyzstan left an opportunity for Russia to regain influence in these former Soviet republics?

Greene says the issue is a little bit more complicated.

"The attention deficit from Washington's side may provide some opportunities to Moscow. They're more aware of an opportunity when it comes up and they might be able to take better advantage of it," Greene says.

"But in the long run, the real meat and bones of the relationship is something that is played out and fought over on a daily basis, not just in these moments of crisis and specific opportunity, but something that is part of trade negotiations and diplomacy and investment."

Saving Face

In recent years, Russia has taken steps to exert political influence in the region. At the beginning of 2006, an energy row between Moscow and Kyiv took on broader implications when Russia said it would no longer supply gas to Ukraine at reduced rates. Eventually, Ukraine was forced to accept the new terms. A few months later, Georgia agreed to pay market rates for Russian gas, too.

Greene says part of Russia's show of force is about saving face.

"The other thing they're sensitive to is image and prestige, partly for domestic reasons, partly for maintaining this international rhetoric that obviously makes them feel very good on some level," Greene says.

"They certainly would not want to see Ukraine join NATO or Georgia join NATO. They certainly would not want to see American antimissile systems and radar bases directly on the other side of the Russian border."

At the same time, he says, Moscow is coming to realize that the influence it used to wield over countries like Ukraine and Georgia is on the wane.

The decision makers in the Kremlin are under no illusion they can bring these countries into line -- now, he says, their primary concern is to do business with them.

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Yanukovych has rejected the order and urged the legislature to continue working while it waits for the Constitutional Court to rule on its legality. (A gallery of images from Kyiv on April 6 and April 7.)

The pro-Western Yushchenko ordered the dissolution of parliament accusing the pro-Russian supporters of Yanukovych of violating the constitution and seeking to usurp power.

Serhiy, a Yanukovych supporter, said demonstrators would remain on the streets until the president backed down.

"We will stay here until [Yushchenko] cancels his decree," Serhiy said. "Let him cancel the decree, which is illegal. We consider that the parliament [is in power]."

Talks between Yushchenko and Yanukovych this week failed to yield a compromise.

The Kremlin said Russian President Vladimir Putin telephoned Yushchenko on April 6 to express his concern over the potential economic effects of the crisis and urge a constitutional solution.

(with material from agency reports)

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