The resounding parliamentary defeat suffered by the Ukrainian opposition will disappoint Yulia Tymoshenko's Batkivshchyna (Fatherland) party.

It will also irk the European Union, especially big-hitter Germany, which is used to getting its own way in redrawing the continent's post-1991 map.

It has been practically one-way traffic since then, with Berlin leading the charge to break up the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

Yugoslav fragments have been absorbed by a carrot-and-stick approach that has seen Serbia dismembered, impoverished and set for a Vito Corleone-style debate on EU accession early next year.

So successful has Germany been since annexation of the German Democratic Republic in 1990 that the refusal of the Verkhovna Rada to back an attempted coup by no-confidence vote will have been a shock.

Not that this will mark the end of EU efforts to bring Ukraine under its wing.

Ukrainians are sharply divided over whether to opt for EU membership or to throw in their lot with the Russian-led Customs Union with Belarus, Kazakhstan and probably Armenia.

Anti-Customs Union campaigners portray Russia in cold war anti-Soviet terms, accusing President Vladimir Putin of applying economic pressure to ensure compliance by his Ukrainian Party of the Regions counterpart Viktor Yanukovych.

Putin is certainly not above such tactics and both men are aware that Ukrainian heavy engineering exports are dependent on Russian markets just as the country relies on Russian low-price gas imports for heating and industrial production.

Nor is pressure a one-way street. The EU made its association and free trade agreement with Ukraine dependent on Tymoshenko's release from jail, where she is serving a seven-year sentence for abuse of power and embezzlement, and rejected attempts by Yanukovych to negotiate over the issue.

Tymoshenko was the poster girl of the 2004 so-called Orange Revolution, when huge numbers of citizens demonstrated in the capital Kiev, occupying the Verkhovna Rada, and secured transfer of presidential power to Viktor Yuschenko, who appointed Tymoshenko as prime minister.

The two are now at daggers drawn. Yuschenko calls Tymoshenko a traitor and testified against her.

This week's protests in Independence Square outside the parliament were effectively an attempt to rerun the Brussels-backed Orange Revolution, but this is not 2004.

Whatever his failings, Yanukovych was elected legitimately, as was his parliamentary majority.

His Prime Minister Mykola Azarov is justified in describing the opposition efforts to steamroller a reversal of government policy as "not the path to European integration but to dictatorship."

Yanukovych's party still backs agreement with the EU, believing, however implausibly, that it might be possible to cherry-pick gains from this while retaining the benefits of Ukraine's links with Russia.

Only the Communist Party (KPU) opposes the EU option, pointing out that Ukraine would have to stump up €165 billion over the next decade to meet EU economic conditions, while receiving just a third of this in development assistance.

KPU deputy Aleksandr Golyb says that association with the EU would provide additional markets for EU transnational corporations.

Big business would also gain access to Ukrainian raw materials and to well-educated and relatively cheap labour.

Ukraine could see its well-developed aerospace, aircraft-construction and shipbuilding industries disappear through their inability to compete with existing EU companies.

The decision on which direction to take must be a matter for the Ukrainian people, but it is important to counter the pro-EU cheerleading by Britain's Establishment media.