SEVASTOPOL DISPATCH

Orange is not the only colour
Russian speakers in Ukraine's Crimean peninsula have helped vote out Viktor Yushchenko, writes Tom Parfitt

Tom Parfitt
Thursday March 30, 2006

Guardian Unlimited

The old man sat alone on a bench clutching a plastic bag. He wore a fake leather jacket and his shoes had been given a new lease of life, not with polish but a coat of brown lacquer that made them twinkle in the sunlight.
His back was straight and he focused his eyes on a faraway point across Sevastopol's deep water bay. "You want to know what we think about the elections?" he said in a steady voice without averting his gaze. "Ask your questions, I'll answer them."

Vadim Polupanov, 68, is a retired merchant seaman. He looked like any other pensioner in the former Soviet Union. Engineers, scientists and teachers; once respected, now eking out survival on a meagre allowance, holding the last scraps of dignity around themselves like a protective shroud.

The usual sloppy tirade seemed likely. No money, no job, no holidays, nothing sure in life any more. But Vadim's complaints were more pointed.

"They are destroying our history, our heritage, our culture," he said. "Yushchenko is an American stooge, a populist. He does everything the US wants. Timoshenko is a liar. I heard she said 'I'll put Sevastopol on its knees'. Imagine that! They want to get rid of us."

He drew breath. "I'm Russian. I was born here. I voted for Yanukovich. He's got a steady grip. He showed it when he was in power. This is a town of Russian glory and it's going to stay that way. Those Ukrainians want to rewrite history and say it's not. Next thing you know, they'll be saying Genghis Khan was Ukrainian. That Yushchenko only wants to give up his country to the West."

It was Sunday March 26, the day of parliamentary elections in Ukraine. The former prime minister, Viktor Yanukovich, had appeared a spent force after he was accused of rigging the 2004 presidential vote that led to the orange revolution. But now his party was predicted to seize the most seats, and went on to do just that.

Mr Yanukovich's opponents, President Viktor Yushchenko and the glamorous Yulia Timoshenko, had fallen out after leading the orange uprising, allowing his comeback.

It seemed a good idea to be in Mr Yanukovich's heartland as votes for him came flooding in. The big, ponderous former governor of the eastern Donetsk region draws his support from the Russian-speaking population in the east and the Crimean peninsula in the south, where Sevastopol is located.

To visit Crimea is to understand the depth of the rift that divides Ukraine. Here, such distant concepts as European integration and Nato accession seem superseded by more perennial concerns: land, freedom, blood and belonging.

A sun-kissed paradise of vineyards and fruit trees that dangles into the Black Sea, Crimea was originally part of Russia. It was transferred to Ukraine by Nikita Khrushchev in 1954 in what was then a minor territorial shift inside the Soviet behemoth. A decade earlier its native population of Crimean Tartars had been deported by Joseph Stalin to Uzbekistan for allegedly cooperating with the Germans during the war.

With the break-up of the Soviet Union, Crimea's mainly Russian population was left stranded in a new country, as was the heroic Russian Black Sea Fleet, anchored in Sevastopol. Old grievances surfaced and new ones quickly emerged.

Today the chief battleground is language. The dispossessed Tartars want back their prime plots of land and support Mr Yushchenko as a result of his promises to help. But the majority Russian population overwhelmingly backs Mr Yanukovich because he has vowed to introduce Russian as a second official language.

Many Russians born and bred in Crimea never needed to learn Ukrainian during the Soviet era, and struggle to understand official documents such as court records. "They're even dubbing our Russian films into Ukrainian," said a disgusted Yevgeny Bubnov, a deputy in the Crimean parliament.

The sense of persecution was not alleviated by a spectacular official cock-up in the run up to the election, which left many disenfranchised. Computer software translated Russian names into Ukrainian ones. Mr Shkvortsov (Mr Starling) became Mr Shpak and could not vote because his passport did not match the electoral roll.

This week, Mr Yushchenko is locked in talks with his former orange allies over a possible coalition to stymie the success of Mr Yanukovich.

One thing is clear in Crimea: if the president wants to be leader of all Ukraine after his party slipped to third place in the election, he must find a way to reach out to the whole country, not just his hardcore supporters.

TERRORIST ATTACK AT UKRAINIAN ELECTIONS

A Molotov cocktail has been thrown to a polling station in a rural region of the Ukraine at the start of the parliamentary elections today. Chief of the Central Electoral Commission Yaroslav Davydovich said that the incident had occurred in Dymerka, near Kiev. The damage is not important, Davydovich says, and the voting will be delayed. There is no word about who could be behind the terrorist attack. Ukrainian authorities seem trying to minimize the incident. Polling stations in the Ukraine opened at 08.00 a.m. local time. By 02.00 pm the turnout has been low. Only 18% of registered voters have cast their votes.

RESISTING KIEV, CRIMEANS HOLD TO MOSCOW ORBIT

By Steven Lee Myers The New York Times
FRIDAY, MARCH 24, 2006
SIMFEROPOL, Ukraine There are few obstacles to speaking Russian here in the Crimea since, after all, almost everyone speaks it at home, at school and at work.Still there are those who complain that the language is under assault, that the courts issue rulings in Ukrainian, that Russian classics are now taught in schools as "foreign" literature, that a repressive government in the capital, Kiev, is bent on imposing a nationalistic identity on a place that was part of Russia until Nikita Khrushchev decreed otherwise in 1954."Whatever we receive from Kiev is all in Ukrainian!" Yevgeny Bubnov, a member of Crimea's regional Parliament, said in an interview as he explained why he had sponsored a proposal to hold a referendum on whether to elevate Russian to official status in a country where, constitutionally, Ukrainian is the language of the land.The federal government fiercely opposed Bubnov's proposal and ultimately rejected it, highlighting the stark ethnic and cultural divisions that continue to haunt Ukraine with the approach of parliamentary elections Sunday, the first since the Orange Revolution a little more than a year ago.The referendum even raised questions about the status of Crimea itself, a lush peninsula of seaside resorts, vineyards and a largely Russian populace, whose political, economic and cultural affiliations are closer to Moscow than to Kiev.And that, its critics say, was exactly the point."It is playing with the sentiments of the population that is still nostalgic for Soviet times, those who reacted painfully to the breakup of the Soviet Union," said Vladimir Shklar, the Crimean leader of Our Ukraine, the political party of President Viktor Yushchenko.The parliamentary elections Sunday will be the first electoral test of Yushchenko's policies since he took office in January 2005 following mass protests after a fraudulent election. Polls suggest he is faring badly, with his bloc trailing the party led by the man he defeated, Viktor Yanukovich.As in the presidential race, the main issues all involve Ukraine's relations with its larger neighbor, Russia. And nowhere are those issues more charged than in Crimea, home not only to a majority of ethnic Russians, but also to Russia's Black Sea Fleet, a source of tension for nearly a decade.As the election campaign began in earnest in January, a group of young people gathered with shovels on the isthmus that connects Crimea with the mainland to dig a symbolic trench. Few openly call for separatism, which is a federal crime, but several smaller parties and blocs are running on platforms calling for closer cooperation with Russia and even reunification.One party based in Crimea even calls itself the Party of Putin's Politics. Its billboards show the steely eyes of President Vladimir Putin of Russia fixed on the rugged Crimean landscape, promising a united future.Mikhail Pushia stood on a square the other day in Sevastopol, the deepwater port city on Crimea's southern bulge, campaigning for Natalia Vitrenko, the leader of a fiercely anti-American and anti-European bloc of parties that advocate a new union of the Slavic nations of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. With a union, Pushia said, "all the problems would be solved."The problems between Russia and Ukraine, of course, are considerable, largely because the ties that once united them are now a source of tension.A New Year's dispute over the price of Russia's natural gas, upon which Ukraine heavily depends, prompted Russia to shut down supplies briefly, infuriating many Ukrainians.Yushchenko's deal with Putin to end the crisis with a complicated pricing system and a murky trading company proved equally unpopular, however. Yanukovich argues that he could have negotiated lower prices because of his friendly relations with Russia.After the gas dispute, Ukraine responded with threats to charge higher rent for the base in Sevastopol that houses the Black Sea Fleet's dozens of ships and 14,000 sailors under a lease set to expire in 2017. Russia now pays about $98 million a year, but some Ukrainian officials have suggested that billions would be more appropriate.In January, Ukraine occupied one of the fleet's lighthouses in Yalta, saying Russia was using it illegally, provoking a war of words and a new round of negotiations to defuse the confrontation. When students began protesting near eight other lighthouses, the fleet tightened security around them.The Russian defense minister, Sergei Ivanov, warned that revising the terms of the lease would reopen a separate treaty that fixed the borders, which is what many here say they would like to see happen."This is a Russian city," said Aleksandr Mironov, an ethnic Russian who settled in Sevastopol after serving in the Soviet border troops.Yanukovich's Party of Regions does not openly endorse such sentiments, but he has promised to make Russian a second official language and to improve economic and political relations with Russia, which have been strained since Yushchenko took office.Yushchenko's supporters say that the language issue and the tensions over the naval base have been exaggerated with the intent to divide Ukrainians and ethnic Russians, who account for about two-thirds of Crimea's nearly two million people, as well as large majorities in the eastern Ukraine regions of Donetsk and Lugansk. Another predominately Russian city, Kharkiv, voted last week to adopt Russian as a second official language in municipal affairs.The referendum, which Crimea's Parliament approved last month, prompted official protests in Kiev and counter-protests on the streets of Simferopol. A regional court in Simferopol, with only tangential jurisdiction, ruled the referendum invalid in a disputed verdict, while the Justice Ministry and the Central Election Commission in Kiev last week announced that holding a vote on the language would violate the law. The referendum's supporters vow to appeal.Khrushchev's decision to cede Crimea to Ukraine mattered little during Soviet times, but immensely after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 and internal administrative borders became international boundaries.It was not until 1997 that Russia and Ukraine reached agreement on how to divide the fleet and to accept the current borders.Despite impassioned oratory on both sides, the prospects of an open conflict appear slight. But Yushchenko's supporters warn that Russia continues to interfere in Ukrainian politics on the hope that a friendlier government led by Yanukovich as a newly empowered prime minister could accept better terms for the fleet and for the Russians living in the region."This is not going to be solved until after the election," a Russian naval officer in Sevastopol said in an interview, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment on what has become a diplomatic matter.With time running out before Election Day, it appears unlikely that referendum supporters can succeed in forcing a vote. Nevertheless the language issue has resonated deeply in Crimea, fanning resentments against Kiev and hardening support for Yanukovich, who won 81 percent of the region's vote in the repeated second round of the disputed 2004 presidential race.The election, warned Vasily Kiselyov, acting chairman of Crimea's Parliament and a Yanukovich stalwart, could lead to a new wave of street protests, even tent camps, only this time against Yushchenko's government.

US CITIZEN ARRESTED IN CRIMEA

Crimean militia arrested naturalized US citizen Sergey Kriukov saying he had been a member of criminal gang Seilem, active on the peninsula in the 1990s. Sources say Mr. Kriukov was detained along with an individual nicknamed “Malysh”. Authorities allege that Sergey Kriukov had been involved in extortion schemes in the Crimea. They point out that he had fled the Crimea in the 90s fearing massive operations against the organized crime. Apparently, Sergey went to the United States where he became an American citizen. Militia say they found his American passport while searching his belongings. There was no word from the US Embassy in Kiev on Kriukov’s arrest. As a US citizen Mr. Kriukov is entitled to American consular assistance. Some observers doubt that he will stay in jail long. They say that the Yushchenko regime grovelling before Washington would not dare to keep an American citizen in detention. Others hope that Mr. Kriukov would be prosecuted and the Americans would review his citizenship granted, as they maintain, to a person with a criminal past.

MASS RALLY IN CRIMEAN CAPITAL

Party of Regions intends to hold referendum on Russian status
SIMFEROPOL, March 18, 2006 (Itar-Tass) - The Party of Regions of Ukraine intends to hold a referendum after parliamentary elections to give Russian a status of state language in Crimea, the party’s leader Viktor Yanukovich said.

Speaking at a mass rally on Saturday, Yanukovich said, “I won’t give up an idea of the referendum on the language.” The meeting involved over 10,000 residents of Crimea. They held placards “Future of Ukraine in Union with Russia”, “No Yushchenko, No Timoshenko.”

The referendum is expected to take place on March 26 simultaneously with the parliamentary and regional elections.
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According to the Tavrichesky Kurier, Kiev deployed unprecedented efforts to wreck the refereendum on the Russian language on March 26. Local electoral commissions are banned to process the referendum bulletins. Leader of the illegal Crimean Tatar parliament the medjlis Mustafa Djemilev threatened that Crimean Tatars would discard referendum bulletins when receiving papers at polling stations.

SUSPECTED CRIMINALS RUNNING FOR CRIMEAN AND UKRAINIAN LEGISLATURES

Crimean Tatar leader Mustafa Djemilev is reportedly among 13 prominent members of the ruling Our Ukraine Party being under secret investigation ordered by the Minister for the Internal Affaires of the Ukraine. Mr. Djemilev is suspected of embezzling about one million dollars through The Crimea Foundation headed by him and the Imdat Bank. The stolen funds were granted to Crimean Tatar families who had grabbed public lands and built houses on them. Djemilev is also being investigated for his supposed ties with Tatar criminal group Imdat which is in control of Tatar businesses in the Crimea.
Another official who got under police scrutiny is former “orange” premier for the Crimea Anatoly Matvienko. Minister for internal affaires Yuri Lutsenko ordered to provide him with information on Matvienko’s brushes with the law in the past. He presumably had lobbied the interests of a liquor producing company in Vinnitsa when he was the governor of the region. In 2002, Mr. Matvienko is said to have received funds for his election campaign from Mr. Brody, the head of the Aiva firm. Earlier, Matvienko had supposedly helped Mr. Brody to obtain illegal reimbursement for the value added tax.
Yuri Lutsenko’s department is also investigating pro-Yushchenko activist from Yalta Alexander Chabanov running for the Crimean Supreme Soviet. Мr. Chabanov is an old buddy of orange oligarch Chervonenko and is suspected to have links with Crimean criminal group Seilem. He came to the Crimea from Vladivostok (Russia) where he had been involved in a number of financial schemes, convicted and sentenced to six years.
This information has appeared on several Ukrainian Internet sites with reference to an unidentified source in the Ministry for the Internal Affaires of the Ukraine.

MILOCEVIC DEATH SHOCKED CRIMEA

Crimeans are worried by the sudden death of former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milocevic in his jail cell. He is the eighth
detainee in The Hague to die under suspicious circumstances. In an interview to the Regnum.ru agency leader of the youth organization in Sevastopol “Proryv” Alexei Dobychin said: “The murder of Slobodan Milosevic by the Hague tribunal as well as the murder of sovereign nations of Yugoslavia and Iran by NATO have once again revealed a villain crime against humanity… There is no doubt that the Crimea is listed by NATO as a target of its terror. Very soon, the world will see the land of the ancient Taurida turn into a realm of fire and death. Russian officials and politicians who support the idea to withdraw the Black Sea Navy from Sevastopol are abettors of NATO fascists and traitors to their own people”. Crimean political scientist Vladimir Djaralla said: “Milosevic was betrayed and sold out but the new rulers did not get money for their deed: the West had them on (some of them even paid with their lives for that). When standing trial at The Hague tribunal Milosevic let Serbs be proud of themselves again. He was sure of himself and did not allow the judges to turn him into an obedient puppet. He looked as a victim of injustice but did not behave like one. His death (in fact a murder) made him a posthumous hero. Serbs will be able to feel proud of their nation once again. At the same time the West found itself exposed as a bunch of fools”.