Kuchma and Putin promote closer ties at events in Crimea (08/05/01)

Kuchma and Putin promote closer ties at events in Crimea

by Maryna Makhnonos
Special to The Ukrainian Weekly

KYIV - In a sign of warmer relations between neighboring Ukraine and Russia, Presidents Leonid Kuchma and Vladimir Putin met to open a newly restored Orthodox cathedral and to celebrate Russian Navy Day on the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea.

In what was their second meeting in less than a week, the two presidents on July 28 attended the consecration of one of Ukraine's largest Orthodox cathedrals in historic Khersones, located near the port city of Sevastopol

"We shall meet even more often," the Interfax news service quoted President Putin as saying in response to a question about what prompted such frequent summits.

Messrs. Kuchma and Putin also met during an informal summit of leaders of the former Soviet republics being held in the Russian Black Sea city of Sochi on August 1-3. In addition, the Russian president has promised to visit Ukraine in August for celebrations of its 10th independence anniversary.

"The event that brought us here will become an important landmark in Ukraine's history, in the history of Orthodox people," said President Kuchma at the opening of St. Volodymyr Cathedral. He added that the church's consecration has significance beyond one country's borders and has meaning for all Slavic nations, according to Interfax.

"Exactly such events give grounds to consider and say that our countries and peoples have entered a new phase of creation, restoration and construction in the widest sense of the word," Mr. Putin said.

The 35-meter-high Byzantine-style cathedral was topped with a huge cross during the consecration ceremony held on the feast day of St. Volodymyr. It is built on the site of an ancient Byzantine basilica erected where Kyivan Prince Volodymyr the Great embraced Byzantine Christianity in 988.

St. Volodymyr Cathedral was first built in 1861-1899. The Bolsheviks used it as a jail for the tsar's military officers during the civil war, and the cathedral was closed by the Communists in 1924. It was destroyed by Nazi German troops during World War II.

President Putin said Christian principles are eternal and guide all leaders "regardless of who is in power and which ideologies are practiced."

"These principles - goodness, charity, love - are the spiritual roots that bind our nations and are the foundation of their unity; in exactly this unity lies our strength," he said, according to Interfax.

Other top officials, including Metropolitan Volodymyr, leader of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church - Moscow Patriarchate, presidential chiefs of staff, Russian Communist leader Gennadii Zyuganov and Kyiv Mayor Oleksander Omelchenko, also attended the ceremony.

Some 300 people gathered at the scene chanting "Russia! Russia!"

A prosperous resort area during the Soviet era, Crimea has been plagued by economic and social hardships since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. Its mostly Russian-speaking population expresses leanings toward Russia, to which the peninsula once belonged.

On Sunday, July 29, Presidents Putin and Kuchma attended a joint naval parade of Russian and Ukrainian military ships that formerly belonged to the Soviet Black Sea Fleet, an air show of Ukrainian MiG-29 and Su-24 warplanes, and demonstrations of a paratroop jump and a rocket salvo - all to mark Russia's Navy Day.

Officials visited the Moskva flagship of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, where Mr. Putin wished prosperity and happiness "to the people of Ukraine as a whole and to Crimean residents in particular."

Ukraine and Russia have long argued over the city of Sevastopol and ownership of the Black Sea Fleet based in the port. The issue was resolved by a 1997 agreement to divide the fleet, but many Russian politicians still rile Ukrainian leaders by suggesting the port should be returned to Russia.

Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, who attended Navy Day celebrations with both presidents, said upon his departure from Sevastopol that the city and, indeed, all of Crimea are Russian territory and must belong to Russia.

Several days after Mr. Luzhkov's remarks, Ukraine's Foreign Affairs Ministry criticized his "unfriendly" statement. "The Moscow mayor's attempt to raise doubts as to Ukraine's territorial integrity and legal boundaries between the two sovereign states ... violates international legal principles," said Serhii Borodenkov, head of the Foreign Affairs Ministry's press service.

"It is a pity that the mayor of Moscow, it turns out, is poorly informed about modern geographical history," Mr. Borodenkov added, demanding that Russian officials explain Mr. Luzhkov's statement before any new high-level Ukraine-Russia bilateral meetings are organized.

Russia's ambassador to Ukraine, Viktor Chernomyrdin, issued a critical response to Mr. Luzhkov's statement, which he said was made unexpectedly after a friendly summit and warm celebrations attended by both nations' leaders. He told the Uriadovyi Kurier daily that Mr. Luzhkov is violating the law.

Earlier in the week there was more controversy as Russian Vice-Prime Minister Viktor Khristenko said it was in Kyiv's and Moscow's common interest to make Russian an official language in Ukraine.

That stance also prompted Ukrainian diplomats to respond negatively.

"Certainly these statements don't promote a climate of trust and mutual understanding in the humanitarian sphere of bilateral cooperation," Ukraine's Foreign Affairs Ministry responded in a statement on August 2.

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