In Russia, with love? Ukraine president meets Putin as options dwindle.

Parliamentary elections are due in Ukraine next Sunday, and the country's divided opposition is not expected to fare well against Yanukovych's party, which is able to deploy state resources in much the way its Russian pro-Kremlin counterpart does. With Ms. Tymoshenko in prison, ironically for signing the disadvantageous gas contract with Russia, the opposition is without its most dynamic personality.

Since coming to power almost three years ago, Yanukovych has moved away from the pro-Western stance of his predecessor, Orange revolutionary Viktor Yushchenko, and mended fences with Moscow by shelving Ukraine's application to join NATO, extending Russia's lease on the Black Sea naval base of Sevastopol for 25 years, and drifting cautiously toward greater economic integration with Ukraine's giant neighbor.

But the supposedly pro-Moscow, native Russian-speaking Yanukovych has dug in his heels on giving up Ukraine's economic sovereignty by joining a Russian-led customs union, and infuriated the Kremlin by prosecuting Tymoshenko for a deal that she made personally with Putin when she was the Ukrainian prime minister.

"The Kremlin wouldn't have minded that Yanukovych jailed Tymoshenko on principle, but it should have been on different grounds, something that didn't involve Putin," says Nikolai Petrov, an expert with the Carnegie Center in Moscow.

"Basically, Yanukovych is considered to be a traitor by Moscow. It had been hoped that he'd play the 'Moscow hand' for us in Ukraine, but he didn't do it.... The Kremlin doesn't like Yanukovych, but will work with him because there are no better alternatives in Ukraine," Mr. Petrov says.

The Putin-Yanukovych meeting took place amid a growing scandal over the alleged snatching of a Russian dissident wanted by Moscow authorities from the streets of Kiev, Ukraine.

Ukrainian police have officially denied any connection with the apparent "rendition" of Leonid Razvozzhayev, who disappeared outside the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees office in Kiev on Saturday and reappeared the next day in Moscow's Lefortovo prison. Russian authorities said he gave himself up voluntarily, and has "confessed" to plotting to destabilize Russia. On Tuesday, Russia's Investigative Committee announced that he has been charged with "organizing mass disturbances."

As he was being pushed into a police van outside a Moscow court Monday, Mr. Razvozzhayev shouted to journalists, "They threatened to kill me. I was abducted in Ukraine and tortured for two days."

"Everyone here is discussing this case," says Vira Nanivska, director of the International Institute of Political Studies in Kiev. "Some think Yanukovych gave Razvozzhayev to Putin as a 'gift,' while others say it demonstrates that Yanukovych does not control our SBU [security service]. One thing's for sure, it does show how much Russia's secret services are capable of."

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