Crimean Peninsula, Home Of Moscow's Black Sea Fleet, Is Potential Flash Point

SEVASTOPOL, Ukraine -- If Ukraine's Crimean peninsula becomes the next flash point between Russia and its West-allied, ex-Soviet neighbors, Gennady Basov is likely to be one of the locals stoking the coals.

Russia's Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol, Ukraine.
A member of Crimea's ethnic Russian majority, Basov engineers pickets at Sevastopol's docks whenever U.S. naval ships cruise into port. He thinks Viktor Yushchenko, leader of the 2004 Orange Revolution and now Ukraine's president, is turning the country into a "banana republic."

And he believes Crimeans will rise up if Ukraine ever joins NATO or evicts Russia's Black Sea naval fleet from its home for the past 225 years, the Ukrainian port of Sevastopol.

"If Ukrainian authorities continue to push away Russians from Crimea, there will be serious consequences," says Basov, a Sevastopol city councilman and head of the pro-Russian Russky Bloc. "I'm sad to pronounce such words, but it will happen so."

What worries Ukrainians is the possibility that Crimeans' fist-shaking will one day be backed up by Russia's military might.

East European nations once subjected to Soviet rule saw Russia's invasion of Georgia in early August and its recognition of separatist enclaves there as independent states as a stern warning from the Kremlin: Pursue NATO membership and risk Moscow's wrath.

Nowhere does that warning ring louder than in Ukraine, which is now looking at pro-Russian rhetoric and demonstrations in Crimea through the prism of the Georgia conflict.

Crimea is not a mirror image of South Ossetia, the breakaway enclave in Georgia that became the impetus for Russia's movement of tanks and troops deep into Georgian territory. South Ossetia and Georgia's other rebel enclave, Abkhazia, are ruled by separatist governments that severed ties with Tbilisi after bloody civil wars in the early 1990s.

Crimea's autonomous parliament adheres to Ukraine's constitution and to rule from Kiev. But there also are disturbing similarities to Georgia's separatist regions that have Ukrainians worriedly trying to forecast the Kremlin's intentions.

As in South Ossetia, allegiance among Crimeans to Russia is widespread and ironclad. More than half of Crimeans are ethnically Russian, and more than 70 percent of them speak Russian rather than Ukrainian. South Ossetians despise Georgian leader and U.S. ally Mikhail Saakashvili; in Crimea, resentment runs deep for Yushchenko, who avidly pushes for Ukraine's membership in NATO.

And Ukrainians worry that, as was the case in South Ossetia, Russian authorities have been trying to distribute Russian passports among Crimeans — an allegation Russian authorities deny. In justifying its invasion of Georgia, Russia said it had to defend Ossetians with Russian citizenship who were under siege when Georgia shelled their capital, Tskhinvali, in early August.

Russia has stressed that it has no intention of ever invading Crimea or any other part of Ukraine. Shortly after sending armored columns into Georgia, however, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev made it clear that Russia would always defend its citizens, no matter where they lived. And on Thursday, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin accused Ukraine of supplying arms and military personnel to Georgia during the recent conflict.

"When people and military systems are used to kill Russian soldiers, it's a crime," Putin told reporters after meeting with his Ukrainian counterpart, Yulia Tymoshenko, at Putin's residence outside Moscow.

"There is indeed a parallel situation here in Crimea," says Sergei Kulik, director of Nomos, an independent think tank in Sevastopol. "Many people in Crimea have both Russian and Ukrainian passports, which makes it possible to one day declare that the rights of Russian citizens have been violated and must be defended. That would bring us to the same situation we saw in Georgia."

Territorially, Crimea is a part of Ukraine. But here in the port city of Sevastopol, the atmosphere is that of a Russian outpost. Along the city's kiosk-lined avenues and seaside esplanades, almost everyone speaks Russian. Russian flags fly from the tops of several downtown buildings. Souvenir shops sell baseball caps with the slogan "Sevastopol-City of Russian Glory."

Crimea's history explains why it is so distinctly Russian. Annexed by the Russian Empire in 1783, Crimea did not become part of Ukraine until 1954, when Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev transferred the province to the Soviet republic of Ukraine.

The peninsula was contested in what is considered the first modern war in 1853-56, when Russia fought an alliance of Britain, France and Turkey. Politically, Crimea has enjoyed a degree of autonomy during various stages of its existence, including from 1921 to 1945 when it belonged to the Soviet Union, and since 1992 while it has been part of Ukraine.

Sevastopol has been home to Russia's Black Sea Fleet since 1783. In 1997, Ukraine agreed to lease the port to the fleet until 2017, when the agreement would be up for renewal. Angered by Russia's actions in Georgia, Ukrainian leaders no longer want to renew the fleet's lease after 2017.

If the Black Sea Fleet is forced to leave Sevastopol, said Leonid Grach, a Communist Party member of Crimea's autonomous parliament, "then Crimea will explode. It'll become Kosovo, or Abkhazia, or South Ossetia. ... We won't have enough cemeteries to bury all the dead people."

Eviction from Sevastopol would force the Kremlin to spend tens of billions of dollars to make the Russian Black Sea port of Novorossiysk fit for naval ships, destroyers and submarines. The fleet's presence in Sevastopol also serves as an invaluable vanguard of influence in Ukraine that Russia would find hard to replace.

"Russia feels its newfound power, and wants to revive its influence over former Soviet territory," says Kulik, the analyst. "That's why keeping the fleet here in Crimea is an effective way of preserving that influence in the [western] part of what once was the Soviet Union."

Source: Chicago Tribune