LVIV, Ukraine – In a rare show of unity, Ukraine’s fractured opposition forces are decrying the April 21 deal by Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych. Some are calling for his impeachment. Under the pact, Russia could keep its Black Sea naval fleet in Crimea until 2042, in exchange for the Kremlin granting a 30 percent discount to Ukraine for natural gas imports this decade.
“A president who has violated the norms of the Ukrainian Constitution [that forbids] foreign military bases on Ukrainian territory should be impeached,” Our Ukraine, the political party which ex-President Viktor Yushchenko heads, said in a statement. “Yanukovych’s command is evidently preparing to give the Russians Ukraine’s last strategic resources: aviation production, atomic energy and underground gas depositories.”
Former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko called on parliament to meet on April 24 to discuss the issue.
Parliament deputy and former Defense Minister Anatoly Hrytsenko said he will lead the charge to oppose the deal. Hrytsenko said schemes linking natural gas prices to the rental agreement for the Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol are nothing new, but should be stopped.
Hrytsenko said Ukraine has been using offsets on fleet rental to pay old gas debts since 1997, when Russia began writing off about $100 million of Ukraine’s gas bill annually in lieu of naval base rent.
The former defense minister said Russians should be charged closer to $1 billion for renting the Sevastopol base.
Hrytsenko said Ukraine hasn’t been able to ask Russia to pay higher rent because it still owed Moscow more than $1 billion for gas supplies in recent years. “Ukraine has lost an enormous amount of money each year because of these ‘friendly’ offsetting arrangements with Russia over gas, including the gas we buy at a discount,” Hrytsenko said.
Former Presidential Secretariat head Viktor Baloha also criticized the deal. “This kind of pact resembles an act of capitulation by independent Ukraine,” Baloha said. “The Russian Black Sea Fleet base in Sevastopol is an ideological headquarters for feeding separatist movements in Crimea.”
Volodymyr Fesenko, director of the Kyiv-based Center for Applied Political Studies, said the deal is a challenge to the political opposition – now in a weakened state as Yanukovych has asserted control over the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government.
Viktor Konstantynov, a senior research fellow at the Kyiv-based Institute of Russian Studies Institute, said the nation’s long-term interests should be kept in mind in attempts to quash the deal.
“The combined potential of Yulia Tymoshenko and the leaders of the parliaments Our Ukraine group, including Hrytsenko, may be enough to counter Yanukovych’s team in the legislature,” Konstantynov said. “The fact that [Russia’s] Gazprom is no longer talking about putting together a consortium to manage Ukraine’s gas pipeline means they want it all for themselves.”
“The combined potential of Yulia Tymoshenko and the leaders of the parliaments Our Ukraine group, including Hrytsenko, may be enough to counter Yanukovych’s team in the legislature,” Konstantynov said. “The fact that [Russia’s] Gazprom is no longer talking about putting together a consortium to manage Ukraine’s gas pipeline means they want it all for themselves.”
Yuriy Scherbak, Ukraine’s former ambassador to the United States, said: “This disgraceful act has all the makings of being anti-constitutional and threatens the national security.”
Under an agreement signed by former President Leonid Kuchma, Russia was to have removed its fleet from its base in Sevastopol in 2017. A five-year extension was possible if both sides agreed to it.
Yushchenko, however, had repeatedly stressed the fleet would have to leave in 2017. That’s why Yanukovych’s decision to prolong the lease took many by surprise, particularly as a tradeoff for cheaper gas.
In announcing the decision to extend the fleet’s presence, Yanukovych said he is considering Europe’s system of collective security.
Parliamentary speaker Volodymyr Lytvyn said the accord would have to be ratified by Ukrainian legislators. The vote could happen as early April 27.
At a security conference held in Lviv on April 15-16, many security experts had warned that extending the Russian Black Sea Fleet’s lease could pull Ukraine into unforeseen conflicts. Citing Russia’s 2008 war with Georgia, Moscow had deployed ships from Sevastopol to participate in military conflicts without warning Kyiv. Under the current agreement, Russia must inform Ukraine first if its ships will take part in military conflicts before they are deployed.
“Georgia was a friendly state to us,” Yevhen Marchuk, who was Ukraine’s defense minister from 2004-2005, told the audience.“What will be the reaction of other states that are not? … Russia is very pragmatic. It will never remove the fleet.”
Former Foreign Minister Arseniy Yatseniuk, leader of “Front Zmin,” said on April 21 that Yanukovych had stopped being president of all Ukraine.
“Somewhere inside I had hoped he would be…but today changed the course of Ukrainian history.”
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on April 22, however, downplayed concerns.
“The most important aspect of the deal is not gas or stationing of the fleet, no matter how important these are Ukraine,” Putin said, according to Interfax-Ukraine news agency. “The most important aspect of the deal is relations between our two peoples, trust in one another and mutual support.”
Natalia A. Feduschak is the Kyiv Post’s correspondent in western Ukraine. She can be reached at [email protected].
Kyiv Post staff writer Kateryna Kobernik can be reached at [email protected]
