Disputed dike project halted after Kuchma visits island at center of crisis
rder Oct. 23, calming an escalating crisis between the two ex-Soviet republics over a small Crimean island that controls access to disputed, resource-rich waters.
Construction stopped hours after Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma cut short a foreign trip to fly by helicopter to inspect Ukrainian border troops guarding Tuzla island, said Andriy Kucherov of Ukraine’s border service. Ukraine claims Tuzla as its territory.
During Kuchma’s visit, Russian workers continued extending the earthworks, pushing to within about 100 meters of the island and defying a call from Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov to suspend construction.
At the center of the developing crisis was the construction of a dike from the Russian mainland into the Kerch Strait that connects the Black and Azov Seas. Ukrainian officials have alleged with increasing vehemence that the dike is a Russian attempt to appropriate Ukrainian land by connecting the island to Russia’s Krasnodar region, and thus seize control of a key shipping channel between Tuzla and Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula.
Speaking to reporters in the Crimean city of Kerch after his visit to the island, Kuchma stressed that the Kerch Strait “must remain Ukrainian.”
Russian officials insist the projects goal is to reduce erosion; Tuzla once was the end of a spit stretching from Russia’s mainland, but a 1925 storm sheared it off, forming a new channel.
Passions have long run high in the region. On the Ukrainian side of the strait is the Crimean Peninsula, once a part of Russia, which many Russians still regard as their own. Crimea was given to Ukraine in 1954 when it was part of the Soviet Union. Some Russian officials now question whether Tuzla island was included in that cession.
Since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia and Ukraine have been locked in a long dispute over the Azov Sea, which Russian President Vladimir Putin last month called an area of “special geopolitical importance and … a zone of strategic interest for Russia.”
Kuchma conceded to Moscow’s request to declare the resource-rich waters common property, but insisted its borders be demarcated based on the surface, not the floor as Moscow wants.
“We will definitely defend this position,” Kuchma said, adding that basing boundaries on the sea floor is “incomprehensible, there must be an area where each country takes responsibility for processes on its territory.”
Dmitry Rogozin, who chaired an emergency meeting of Russian lawmakers in Moscow, called for the dike construction to continue to prevent Ukraine from “usurping” rights to the Kerch Strait.
“This will open the Strait to foreign military ships … which openly contradicts the spirit of neighborhood and cooperation between Kyiv and Moscow,” he said.
Krasnodar’s regional governor, Aleksei Tkachov, ordered the 2-3 day suspension to allow top officials from both sides to negotiate a peaceful settlement, the Itar-TASS news agency reported. However, work continues to reinforce exiting structures, Kucherov said late Oct. 23. Ukraine’s Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych is expected to travel to Moscow Oct. 24 for talks with Russian officials. Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov is also due in Kyiv next week for another round of talks on the issue.
