The rivals for Ukraine’s affections met yesterday in The Hague, smiled for the cameras, and set out their positions on the country’s deepening crisis through the diplomatic equivalent of gritted teeth.

“We have no moral right whatsoever to push a major European state to . . . mass mayhem,” President Putin of Russia told reporters and his host, Jan Peter Balkenende, the Dutch Prime Minister and current holder of the European Union’s rotating presidency. Mr Balkenende sought common ground, but convinced no one: 900 miles to the east, Kiev remained in turmoil for a fourth day because of two irreconcilable visions of Ukraine’s present and future. One vision is more honest than the other, but both are blurred and they threaten not only Russia’s relations with Europe but also the integrity of Ukraine herself.

The EU and the United States maintain, with ample justification, that Sunday’s election was marred by massive fraud. They want to see the result overturned and Ukraine welcomed in due course into the European fold. Mr Putin regards his preferred candidate’s manufactured victory as sufficiently democratic for him to have offered two sets of effusive congratulations since Sunday. He now wants to draw Ukraine into ever-closer union with a Russia that still, by large majorities, considers Ukraine’s independence in 1991 as akin to an amputation.

Western complaints about ballot-rigging in favour of Viktor Yanukovych are based on the reports of more than 500 international observers and on the wide gap between exit poll results and the “official” three-point victory for Mr Yanukovych announced on Wednesday. These complaints are valid, but almost impossible to prove, not least because much of the alleged fraud appears to have involved the outright destruction of ballots. Furthermore, even supporters of Viktor Yushchenko, the opposition candidate who would seek Ukrainian membership of Nato, do not deny that 40 per cent or so of voters did not back their man.

It is of grave concern that Mr Putin has refused to recognise the overwhelming evidence of foul play before and during this election. However the current crisis is resolved, it should oblige the Russian leader’s admirers on the world stage to abandon any illusions they may still have harboured about his democratic credentials. But to demand that Mr Yushchenko be named President without ballots proving he had earned the post would also cause turmoil. It would leave his many Western supporters vulnerable to the charge of browbeating through their protests an independent, non-threatening country into regime change, and Mr Yushchenko hamstrung from the start by the appearance of having been installed, not elected. This is not the way in which he should assume office.

The solution is expensive and less glamorous than a revolution. It is to rerun the election. This, rather than instant annointment, is what Mr Yushchenko should be asking of Ukraine’s Supreme Court, whose ruling yesterday that the final election result could not be published pending his appeal can be taken as a hopeful sign. A fresh election would have to be subject to unforgiving scrutiny from Eastern, Western and Ukrainian observers, and its winner would have to recognise the dangerous divisions in his country. But with a truly democratic mandate he would have a better chance than anyone of healing them.