Black Sea Port Access Stokes Russia-Ukraine Tensions

SEVASTOPOL, Ukraine -- As the Kremlin seeks to reassert its sphere of influence around its borders and beyond, this home port for Russia's Black Sea fleet — marooned in the south of Ukraine after the breakup of the Soviet Union — has moved to the center of tensions between Russia and U.S. allies in the region.

Russian fleet in Sevastopol, Ukraine.
Some Ukrainian politicians worry that Russia will stoke anti-Western sentiments in Sevastopol and cities around it on the Crimean peninsula to create an opportunity to annex the area, the way Moscow did with two breakaway provinces in Georgia last month, or at least use its considerable influence here to push the central government in Kiev to drop plans to join the European Union and NATO.

Either move would heighten the rising tensions between Russia and the United States, which have returned to Cold War levels over the past year.

NATO Aspirations Unsettling

Georgia and Ukraine, with American backing, angered the Russian leadership with their NATO aspirations.

If they were to join, Russia's Black Sea coastline would be bracketed by members of the military organization.

Sergei Zayats, the administrator of Sevastopol's largest district, said he thought the Russians would be willing to resort to force to keep their ships docked in Crimea, where their fleet has operated since the 1780s.

"The events in Georgia show that this may happen at any time," said Zayats, who was appointed by Kiev.

Russia has said it has no plans along those lines.

"This is a myth brought to you from other countries that Crimea will be next," Vsevolod Loskutov, the No. 2 man in the Russian Embassy to Ukraine, told journalists last week.

"Both Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin have repeated many times that we highlight our respect to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine," Loskutov said.

Histories Intertwined

The tension over Crimea is complicated by the intertwined histories of Ukraine and Russia. The region belonged to Russia until 1954, when Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev handed it over to Ukraine.

At the time, the difference was largely semantic, but when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, many in Crimea would have rather not become part of an independent Ukraine.

In interviews on the streets of Sevastopol, college students, engineers and housewives alike said they sympathized with Russia far more than with Viktor Yushchenko, Ukraine's pro-Western president.

Any move to join NATO, they said, almost certainly would lead to a backlash.
"The majority of people here are against NATO," said Viktor Kiselyov, a local artist. "The reason is that NATO is confronting Russia, and Russia is us."

Probe Finds Violations

Though the Russian government denies issuing passports to residents of Crimea, a tactic used in Georgia to bolster claims that the Kremlin had to save its citizens there, the prosecutor's office in Sevastopol said an investigation that started two months ago already has found 1,500 residents with both Russian and Ukrainian passports, in violation of Ukrainian law.

Some of those passports were from the early 1990s, when the question of statehood was unclear.

But others were issued during the past few years, said Alexander Rubstov, an official in the prosecutor's office, who didn't say how many passports fell into each of those categories.

Rubstov said the inquiry in the city of about 430,000 residents still had a long way to go, and the numbers could rise.

Roman Zvarych, a top official in Yushchenko's Our Ukraine party, said he thought Russia had passed out "something in the neighborhood of several tens of thousands" of passports in Crimea, a charge Moscow has denied.

Source: Arizona Daily Star