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.