The inauguration of President Viktor Yanukovych represents a watershed moment for Ukraine and the West. His election was significant, not only because voters have clearly soured on the Orange Revolution, but because a Yanukovych administration ups the ante for Western engagement on Europe’s eastern frontier. Now that the dust from the campaign has settled, and Russia seeks to magnify its influence in the country, America and the European Union (EU) cannot afford a business as usual approach to Kyiv.

After the presidential ballot count was announced, Russia’s president called to offer Yanukovych hearty congratulations. “The battle had been hard-fought, but open and honest,” he said, “and his victory was convincing.” The president on the other end of the line was Vladimir Putin. The date was November 23, 2004. Within hours of that famous call, thousands – and eventually more than a million – Ukrainians took to the streets to protest the most brazen attempt at voter fraud ever perpetrated in the country’s history as an independent state. The Ukrainian Supreme Court agreed with the protesters. It reversed Yanukovych’s victory and paved the way for a new breed of politician, personified by the Orange Revolution’s leaders, Viktor Yushchenko and Yulia Tymoshenko.

Six years later, Yanukovych is finally victorious, transforming frustration with the revolution’s missed opportunities and broken promise into a rallying call for his campaign. “Together, we have suffered through this Orange nightmare,” he said at a pre-election assembly. “Let us consign this history to the black pages of our lives.”

Certainly, those black pages are interspersed with white and gray. On one hand, the Orange Revolution freed Ukraine’s media from tight government control and transformed the country from Partly Free to Free (on Freedom House's annual survey of political rights and civil liberties). However, the event also ushered in an era of remarkable instability and weak national governance. As President Yushchenko and Prime Minister Tymoshenko indulged in a bitter public rivalry, voters watched the economy shrink by 15 percent in a single year, unemployment double and state finances spiral out of control.

Sensing an opportunity, Yanukovych seized upon the economy when he launched a new presidential campaign from his political stronghold in the industrialized east. It was a deft political move that delivered immediate benefits. However, Yanukovych’s economic agenda is largely predicated on factors outside his control: that a global economic recovery will bolster demand for steel in Ukraine’s largest export market, Russia, reversing the country’s fortunes and underwriting his optimistic campaign promises.

Viewed from Moscow, the Kremlin hopes to bring Ukraine firmly into its political sphere. Indeed, many of Yanukovych’s policies will be popular with the Russian government. His Party of Regions has already signed a cooperation agreement with Putin’s party of power, United Russia; opposed Ukraine’s further integration into NATO; fought against World Trade Organization (WTO) ascension and impeded a new free trade agreement with the EU. Frustrated with the economy, and mugged by the Orange Revolution, Ukraine’s voters may have made Russia’s geopolitical ambitions easier to attain under a Yanukovych presidency. However, state capture is far from certain.

For policymakers in the United States and Europe, the stakes could not be greater. Over the last decade, officials in Washington, Brussels and Warsaw have invested vast sums of political and financial capital to bolster Ukraine as a democratic, independent and stable ally. Ukrainian armed forces fought alongside U.S. soldiers in Iraq, assisted peacekeeping efforts in the Balkans and supported anti-terrorism operations on the high seas. Since 2005, Ukraine has bucked the broader trend toward fewer freedoms and strong-armed governance. If President Yanukovych is not committed to preserving Ukraine’s fragile democracy and greater integration into western institutions, then the United States and Europe may fail to recoup their decades-long investment.

Viewed from neighboring Poland, a perceived shift in Ukraine’s western orientation will heighten worries over the Kremlin’s ambitions in its neighborhood and increase calls to demonstrate the sincerity of NATO's collective security guarantees. As enthusiasm for the Alliance’s eastward expansion declines, NATO’s most exposed members in Central Europe do not wish to find themselves on the edge of an unstable geopolitical fault line.

For the cost of sending Air Force Two on a state visit to Kyiv so that Vice President Joseph Biden could enjoy a well-publicized Coke with President Yushchenko, the State Department could sponsor scores of Ukrainian officials to learn best-practices in local administration from their counterparts in Wichita and Minneapolis. Other multi-lateral initiatives aimed at strengthening good governance in Ukraine, such as the EU’s Eastern Partnership Program and a revival of the Community of Democracies in Warsaw need U.S. attention and resources. The White House has already called upon the EU’s post-Communist Member States to assume a greater role in mentoring their eastern neighbors. Given the increased uncertainty over Ukraine’s east-west orientation, this is a perfect moment for the U.S. Administration to flex its remaining soft power leverage in Ukraine in order to preserve the gains of the last two decades.