At first glance, it did seem a bit odd that "Vovo," his nickname on the streets of Moscow or Kiev, took an active interest in the election of the Ukrainian presidential candidate Viktor Yanukovich this fall when last winter he was indifferent to his own election. His two campaign appearances on behalf on Yanukovich were exactly two more than Putin made on his own behalf.

Opposition attack

What did Putin see that made him take such an interest in the Ukrainian elections? First, he did not see a risk. Outgoing Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma must have assured Putin that the fix was in.

Secondly, ex-KGB agent Putin found irresistible the opportunity to paint the opposition candidate as a dupe of the CIA. The smear started in 2001. Moscow's state controlled ORT television aired a report on Viktor Yushchenko's wife, Kateryna Chumachenko. A Ukrainian American, she had met her future husband on an international flight, they married, and the formerly routine apparatchik Yushchenko became a reformist politician advocating privatization, membership in NATO and the EU, and an end to the Ukrainian subservience to Moscow.

The Russian television report did acknowledge that, like its viewers, it does sentimentally believe that men and women do meet on international flights by chance, fall in love, and live happily ever after.

But, when Ms. Chumachenko was a former employee of the U.S. State Department and an associate of Zbigniew Brzezinski, ORT suggested the likelihood that -- as the Russian say, ne sliuchaino or "it's not by coincidence" -- the hand of the CIA not Cupid's arrows lies behind this match.

Of course, Putin's KGB skills are too sharp to believe such nonsense, but with Russian television anxious to please him why not -- to use a Rush Limbaugh phrase -- just throw this one out there to rally Russian nationalists at home and their sympathizers in Ukraine?

Moscow's interests

For what purpose? For the past year, Putin has strengthened Moscow's hand among its neighbors in the "near abroad" -- the states carved out of the former Soviet republics in Central Asia, the Caucasus, Ukraine, and Belarus. He disguises his motives with a sleight of hand. As he put it in his speech Dec. 3 in New Delhi, somebody must protect these regions from Washington's "dictatorship of international affairs."

A Kremlin-friendly Ukraine is the key to Russian neo-imperialism Putin style. His goal is a rump version of the old Soviet system of satellite states. Instead of a ring of communist clones in Eastern Europe, Putin has his eyes on a smaller sphere of interest.

Putin's seeks to surround Russia with a ring of satellites of corrupted democracies. It was logical that Putin would have thrown his support behind Yanukovich, a man who did time for armed robbery and assault. He is, in other words, a man with whom Putin could do business.

Yushchenko's victory last week does not mean that Putin has no more tricks to play in the three weeks leading up to the new elections. President Bush would be well-advised to take another look into Putin's eyes or, better yet, ask Condolezza Rice to take a look. Earlier, she made her mark for knowing much about the souls of Russian KGB men.

Nick Hayes is a professor of history and holds the university chair in critical thinking at St. John's University, Collegeville.

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