Would-be czar Vladimir Putin has taken a giant step toward reasserting the regional hegemony of the former Soviet Union by stealing the election in Ukraine right under our noses.

As an unpaid, volunteer adviser to Viktor Yushchenko, the democratic candidate for president, I have seen, firsthand, how Viktor Yanukovich, the Putin candidate backed by a coalition of the Russian Mafia, oil barons, former KGB officials and communists stole the election and thwarted the obvious will of the voters.

While the former Soviet Union was composed of many smaller nations, now independent, the key was the combination of Russia and Ukraine. Russia’s 145 million people and Ukraine’s 45 million are the core of what was the Soviet empire.

Reuniting them has to be the primary goal of any aspiring Russian czar. But the Ukrainian people don’t want Russian domination.

The election contest pitted Yushchenko, who got the virtually solid support of the 60 percent of the population that is Ukrainian by ethnicity, against Yanukovich, who won equally united backing from the 40 percent that is ethnically Russian. The result was obvious: Exit polls (more accurate in Ukraine than when our own TV networks do them) showed Yushchenko winning by more than 10 points. But the final results, announced by the government, which supported Yanukovich, showed a small margin in favor of the Russian-backed candidate.

Putin regarded the contest as so important that he personally visited Ukraine in the weeks before the election to campaign for his candidate, a clear violation of the most elementary standards of independence and protocol. His former KGB henchmen — and once and future communists — combined with Russian organized-crime figures and oil barons to pump money into the race and to intimidate voters on the ground.

In a news briefing at the State Department, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell delivered a sharp rebuke to the Ukrainian authorities who today declared Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych the winner of a run-off election Sunday that Ukrainian protesters and foreign observers said was marred by fraud.

"We cannot accept this result as legitimate, because it does not meet international standards and because there has not been an investigation of the numerous and credible reports of fraud and abuse," Powell said.