The gas-for-fleet deal, mixing business and politics, has inflamed Ukrainians who had hoped the Russian Black Sea Fleet would be out of national waters by 2017.
Despite the fact that Ukraine’s Constitution prohibits the basing of foreign troops on Ukrainian territory, the Russian navy has maintained its presence in Crimea under a bilateral agreement signed in 1997 by ex-President Leonid Kuchma.
President Viktor Yanukovych, whose fraud-marred bid for the presidency in 2004 was supported by the Kremlin, has denied betraying national interests with the extension that brings the promise of cheaper natural gas imports from Russia. Europe and America are playing down the significance of the deal, which extended the Russian fleet’s stay in Sevastopol – a city openly claimed for Russia by Moscow politicians – from 2017 until 2042.
Black Sea Fleet Commander Vice Admiral Alexander Kletskov has said the Russian naval presence will enhance Ukraine’s security. “Everybody has become sure that the Black Sea Fleet will continue to protect the southern frontiers of our friendly countries, Russia and Ukraine. We are still ready to decently act as a guarantor of peace and security in the region in the spirit of centuries-old traditions of our fraternal peoples,” he told Krymskaya Pravda newspaper on April 29.
“It is difficult to say who the Russian navy would protect Ukraine from”.
– Keith Smith, senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
But others aren’t convinced.
“It is difficult to say who the Russian navy would protect Ukraine from. I suspect that this is an attempt by Moscow to close off any prospect of a closer security relationship in the future with Europe or the trans-Atlantic community,” said Keith Smith, a former U.S. ambassador to Lithuania and now senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank. Defense Express director Valentin Badrak called the Black Sea Fleet a destabilizing – if not threatening – factor for Ukraine, upsetting Crimean politics as well as the military situation in the region.
Yanukovych and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev left a lot of uncertainty in the lease extension. For example, it’s not clear exactly what facilities the fleet is renting, on what terms and whether they can sublet them. Secondly, and more ominously, is whether Russia can add more ships to the base or update its weapon systems. Up until recently, the Kremlin hasn’t had the money to do so.
The threat could take the form of another attack by the fleet against a third country (as it did in 2008 against Georgia), making Ukraine vulnerable to reprisal. The presence of the Russian fleet could also stir up separatist sentiment among ethnic Russians – the dominate group – on the Crimean peninsula. “The most dangerous thing is the dissemination of the idea that the Ukrainian people are really part of Russia, the resurgence of neo-imperialism,” Badrak said.
Kyiv Post staff writer John Marone can be reached at [email protected].
