Ukraine's Sevastopol Braces For Exit Of Russian Fleet

SEVASTOPOL, Ukraine -- For more than 200 years, Russia's Black Sea fleet has set sail from the Crimean port of Sevastopol to battle the motherland's adversaries -- Turkish, British, French and German.

Sight gunner of a Russian Black Sea Fleet warship
There's just one problem: Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Sevastopol has been a part of an independent Ukraine whose president, Viktor Yushchenko, wants to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The issue is central to parliamentary elections on Sept. 30.

The 2017 expiration of the fleet's lease on its Sevastopol base has implications for Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has been reasserting his nation's military might.

While Russia encourages support for Ukrainian Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, who is seeking closer ties with Moscow, it is also planning for a new warm-water home for the pride of its navy at Novorossiisk, an oil terminal.

Politicians aren't the only ones grappling with the reverberations. So are local residents. ``It would definitely be a tragedy'' if the fleet leaves, said Vladimir Klyuyev, a retired naval captain who runs the Black Sea Fleet's museum in Sevastopol. ``People have spent their whole lives here in the service of the motherland.'' Russia's national pride will suffer if the fleet goes, he said.

``We're Russians, the fleet's Russian, of course we feel badly,'' said Irina Vaskovskaya, who works at the museum and whose father served in naval bases across Russia before settling in Sevastopol.

Buffer Zone

Throughout the communist years, the Black Sea was a buffer between NATO and the Soviet-dominated Warsaw Pact. The politics of the countries bordering the sea have been transformed since the Soviet Union broke up in 1991.

Romania and Bulgaria are members of NATO and the European Union; Georgia wants to join both; Turkey, a NATO member since 1952, is a candidate for EU membership.

With Ukraine and its Black Sea coast of 1,400 kilometers (875 miles) possibly off-limits too, Russia might be relegated to its own 400-kilometer coastline in a sea it once dominated.

The Russian presence is ``fundamental both to security and economic stability,'' said Andrei Krylov, the Russian Defense Ministry's spokesman for the Black Sea Fleet. There are about 5,000 Russian naval personnel in the port and Russia pays Ukraine $98 million a year in rent. ``Twenty percent of Sevastopol's budget comes from the fleet,'' he said.

Tourist Draw

The fleet is a tourist attraction: Owners of small boats vie to persuade visitors to cruise around the port, where more than 20 naval vessels including destroyers, hospital ships and submarines were moored on a recent visit.

A different bay houses the Ukrainian navy, which that day was hosting a U.S. vessel. NATO's presence in the Russian fleet's home port isn't a source of tension, said NATO spokesman James Appathurai. ``We cooperate just as well with the Russian navy as with the Ukrainian one,'' he said by telephone.

The fleet figures in the Ukrainian campaign. Defense Minister Anatoliy Hrytsenko, loyal to Yushchenko, said Sept. 18 that the constitution bans foreign forces on Ukrainian territory. ``The exception is only for the Russian fleet, but only until 2017,'' he said.

Pro-Yanukovych Transport Minister Mykola Rudkovsky countered on Sept. 17 that ``if we have a new president after the 2009 elections, it will be possible to prolong the agreement.''

The fleet's military effectiveness won't be much affected by a move, said Jonathan Eyal, director of International Security Studies at the Royal United Services Institute in London. ``The strength of the Russian navy should not be compromised,'' he said.

Military Clout

The same may not be true for issues of Russian prestige and influence. Putin, seeking to show Russia's economic success is matched by political and military clout, on Aug. 17 ordered the resumption of regular patrols by strategic bombers, a practice halted in 1992.

Russia this month also tested what it called the world's most powerful air-delivered vacuum bomb. The weapon is four times more powerful than the Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb tested by the U.S. military and known as the ``Mother of All Bombs,'' according to a report by Russian state broadcaster Perviy Kanal. This prompted the Russian designers to call their device ``the Father of All Bombs,'' it said.

Russia's commitment to the Black Sea is evident at the ancient, nearby harbor of Balaklava. Here, in 1957, the Soviet Union built an underground terminal, carved into rock and all but invisible from outside, as the main base for the fleet's submarines.

Secret Project

A 600-meter long tunnel runs from inside the harbor, allowing submarines to sail straight in for maintenance and repairs. Seven submarines could be accommodated there. So secret was the project, Balaklava disappeared from official Soviet maps.

``In the case of a nuclear attack, the base could stand a direct hit by a nuclear bomb,'' reads a guide to the site. It's now the Balaklava Naval Museum Complex, for tourists who want to examine gigantic steel doors and bulkheads designed to protect against fallout.

If tourism is all that remains of the fleet's presence, neither the port nor the nation where it's located will be better off, museum director Klyuyev said.

``Practically all inhabitants of Sevastopol, and a very big proportion of Ukrainians, hope common sense will prevail,'' he said.

Source: Bloomberg