When Russia had turned off the gas and threatened its defiant southern neighbour with a deep winter freeze last week, many Ukrainians may have wished for a leader who would stand up to Moscow with heated passion and fiery rhetoric.
But President Viktor Yushchenko, a former central banker and avid beekeeper, was never good at warming up a crowd. During Ukraine's Orange Revolution, he left that task to his now-estranged ally, the charismatic Yulia Tymoshenko.
If Mr Yushchenko is not much of a rabble-rouser, though, he is a post-Soviet problem solver par excellence. He went straight to work, mostly behind the scenes, and cobbled together a complex, some say shady, deal that appeared to meet Russian demands while sharply limiting the potential economic damage to Ukraine.
Under the scheme, a shadowy Russian-Ukrainian joint venture called RosUkrEnergo will mix cut-rate gas somehow obtained from former Soviet Central Asia with a more expensive Russian product to provide Ukraine with energy that is still among the cheapest in the world.
'This proves that Ukraine is ready to work in market conditions, and it is a worthy partner both for Russia and Europe,' was all Mr Yushchenko's office had to say about the unusual settlement of what might have developed into a serious geopolitical crisis.
'It's hard to say who won in the end, but somehow Ukraine survived,' says Alexander Chernenko, head analyst with the Committee of Ukrainian Voters, a citizens' group based in Kiev.