A win for Davis Manafort

(Ukrainian Presidential candidate Victor Yanukovych (AP)).

The firm of John McCain's campaign manager, Rick Davis, is poised to pull off a major victory in the Ukraine, bringing to power the pro-Russian, anti-Western former prime minister whose victory five years ago was thrown out as fraudulent triggered the country's "Orange Revolution" five years ago.

Davis himself has always said he didn't work on the account, leaving it to his partner, Paul Manafort. But the financial relationship between McCain's aide and a political campaign deeply tied to Russia — which McCain has always deeply distrusted — was an oddity of the '08 campaign.

Manafort spoke to The New York Times's Clifford Levy last month, casting the campaign — and his firm's makeover of Victor Yanukovich — in classic American political terms.

“Despite the great expectations from the Orange campaign promises of five years ago, the world and the people of Ukraine see that [Yulia] Tymoshenko has failed,” he said.

Now, with most of the votes counted, he appears to have helped restore to Ukraine the Russian hegemony McCain has spent much of his career battling.