Last Friday, Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry called in the Russian Ambassador to Ukraine, Yuri Dubinin, to officially protest the remarks made by Moscow’s Mayor Yuri Luzhkov in Sevastopol last Wednesday as ‘an intrusion into Ukraine’s internal affairs and disrespect for its sovereignty’. Deputy Foreign Minister Oleksandr Chaly told the Russian ambassador that Luzhkov ‘once again has made statements containing unfriendly attacks on Ukraine’.
The Moscow mayor on a visit to the Russian Navy in Sevastopol to open up a school for 1,200 children of servicemen with the Russian Black Sea Fleet, attacked the Ukrainian government for pursuing a policy of forced ‘Ukrainianization’ of Sevastopol, which he called a Russian city that should be returned to Russia.
Speaking to an audience of over 2,000 people and rows of Russian sailors, Luzhkov said that this year the Moscow government would complete 120 apartments in Sevastopol for Russian Black Sea Fleet personnel.
Due to shortage of money from Russia’s government, the ships of the Russian Black Sea Fleet are also patronized under ‘adoption schemes’ by Moscow and other Russian cities. Luzhkov said unashamedly this aid was given so that the Russian Black Sea Fleet would keep alive the hope that Sevastopol would one day ‘come back to Russia’.
Luzhkov, who has aspirations to become the next president of Russia, has regularly visited the Russian Black Sea Navy in Sevastopol and made similar remarks. Despite this, the Ukrainian government had not declared him a persona-non-grata. Instead, in 1996, it banned his advisor, Konstantin Zatulin, from entering Crimea for five years for expressing the same views as his boss on Sevastopol.
Last week, Zatulin was stopped by the Ukrainian authorities from joining his boss in Sevastopol. He attempted to sneak into Crimea by taking a ferry from Russia to Kerch, but was apprehended by the Ukrainian authorities and sent back to Russia.
Despite Luzhkov’s undiplomatic remarks, on the same day the leaders of Crimea, the speaker of Crimea’s parliament, Leonid Hrach, and its Prime Minister, Serhy Kunitsyn, welcomed Luzhkov in Simferopol and signed a number of bi-lateral economic agreements. Also an agreement was signed to further Russianize Crimea with Russian TV and radio broadcasts to the peninsula, and to open a branch of Moscow University in Simferopol.
The Moscow mayor told journalists that the agreement will ‘gradually restore theeconomic, cultural and human relations between the two independent economicentities that existed in Soviet times.’
Prime Minister Kunitsyn said the agreement was a ‘serious psychological breakthrough in relations between the Moscow and Crimean governments’. Hrach made the curious remark that ‘the agreement will make it possible to resolve a lot of problems for the autonomy (of Crimea)’. He added that the agreement was a step towards ‘prosperity in unity’.
Despite welcoming Luzhkov, Hrach has pretensions to become the president of Ukraine. As a member of the Communist Party of Ukraine, he has announced his ambitions to replace the present Communist leader Petro Symonenko. The newspaper Den on August 26 quoted Hrach as saying: ‘If I remain in the post of the autonomous republic’s Supreme Council [parliament] chairman, I will run for the presidency after 2000,’ the leader of the Crimean Communists said. ‘If I am forced to go, then I, as the first secretary of the [Crimean] republic’s Communist Party committee, will be compelled to put forward my candidacy for the post of president of Ukraine in the elections of 1999.’
Kunitsyn, the Prime Minister of Crimea, is a close ally and appointee of President Kuchma. It seems that this close connection to the President does not keep Kunitsyn from working with Luzhkov who many accuse of attempting to provoke a war between Ukraine and Russia.
In the statement issued by Ukraine’s Ministry of Affairs, there is no mention of banning Luzhkov from making any more visits to Ukraine.
Luzhkov’s remarks could ignite the power keg which is Sevastopol. Home to two Black Sea navies, Ukraine’s and Russia’s, it is an armed camp. Russian sailors and their children, instead of being told they are guests in Ukraine, are being told that Sevastopol belongs to Russia. Meanwhile Ukrainian armed forces are told that Sevastopol and the Crimea is an integral part of Ukraine and have sworn an oath to protect its borders.
