EUROPE should have been more careful in wishing that Belarus and Ukraine stay at a comfortable distance. Its wish has been emphatically granted.

Sunday’s presidential elections in Belarus showed that the European Union’s influence on that half-frozen country is zero. The coming Sunday’s parliamentary election in Ukraine — a far better candidate for EU friendship — is likely to deliver the same message.

In the past year, the EU, sagging under its own sense of over-expansion, has been so anxious to deter any hopeful new applicants that it has been too chilly towards both countries, hurting itself as well as them.

In Minsk yesterday, the triumphant 2½-hour rant by President Alexander Lukashenko claimed that his re-election, with more than 80 per cent of the vote, was free and fair. The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), as expected, said the opposite, emphatically.

The crowd of 10,000 protesting against the result was high, by the standards of this tightly controlled country. But that does not, on its own, offer much reason for hope that Belarus is about to develop an opposition worth the name.

Belarus remains, by coercion and by choice, under the thumb of Russia. Not that President Vladimir Putin likes Lukashenko; he doesn’t. He regards him, rightly, as a self-indulgent dictator.

He could, no doubt, replace Lukashenko, if he had a biddable replacement — but he doesn’t. He does not want to start anything which might install a pro-EU leader in Minsk.

There is probably little the EU could do to provoke change in Belarus directly. Its influence through trade is small (just over a third of Belarus’s trade in 2004, compared to 45 per cent for Russia, according to EU figures). Russia’s subsidies to Belarus remain huge.

So any influence would have to be through Moscow not Minsk. But here, surely, Europe could have tried harder. As US-Russian relations are in such a prickly state, Europe is better placed to talk to Putin. It couldn’t put pressure on him, but it could explore a deal.

But the EU has not seemed able to agree even within itself how to approach this puzzle. Austria, now holder of the EU presidency, and Belgium, now holder of the OSCE presidency, have both favoured a softer approach towards Russia on these questions. That has not helped the EU to be outspoken.

In Ukraine’s case, the EU has even less excuse for rebuffing a possible ally. During Ukraine’s Orange Revolution late in 2004, it seemed to dangle the promise of all kinds of Western links, if there were only a pro-Western president. It appeared to listen to Poland’s excited desire for Ukraine to be considered as a potential member.

It already outstripped Russia in trading with Ukraine, on some measures (a third of Ukraine’s total trade, compared to a quarter for Russia), and seemed to promise even deeper links in the future.

But when the demonstrations by hundreds of thousands of people finally propelled reformer Viktor Yushchenko to the presidency, ousting Viktor Yanukovich, relations with the EU appeared to cool. His victory, just six months before France and the Netherlands voted “no” on the EU constitution, coincided with European anxiety that the Union was expanding too far, too fast.

When Russia sharply raised the price of gas it sold to Ukraine this year, and briefly cut off supply, the EU was certainly alarmed. But that was more on its own behalf, judging by the urgent talks in Brussels on energy security, than on Ukraine’s.

In Sunday’s elections, the reformers will have a rough ride. That is partly because voters expected too much, and have held the tough economic conditions against the new Government. It is partly because Yanukovich has remodelled himself as a modern democratic campaigner, rushing around shaking hands, rather than disrupting rivals’ rallies.

But it is also because Ukrainians are disappointed in Europe. In the great gas row, Putin warned the EU that it couldn’t have Ukraine’s friendship, while Russia continued to foot the bills. He is right; the EU has tried to have it both ways — wanting security to the East, without offering membership or money in return.