ANALYSIS: Is Moscow heading for border conflict with Kyiv? (10/26/03)

ANALYSIS

Is Moscow heading for border conflict with Kyiv?

by Jan Maksymiuk
RFE/RL Poland, Belarus and Ukraine Report

Earlier this month, Ukraine's Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement warning the Russian government that the construction of a dam, already underway, between Russia's Taman Peninsula and the islet of Tuzla in the Kerch Strait may violate Ukraine's state border and territorial integrity. According to some reports in the Ukrainian media, after the construction of the dam, the Russian side is going to set a frontier post on the islet, which Ukraine considers to be its own territory.

In response, the Ukrainian side has reportedly reinforced the islet with a border guard unit and installed anti-tank defenses. According to some Russian newspapers, the dam, which is 30 meters wide, is now only 1 kilometer away from the islet.

Kerch Strait is a shallow channel connecting the Azov Sea with the Black Sea and separating Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula in the west from Russia's Taman Peninsula in the east. Until 1925, Tuzla was the Tuzla Spit, but a heavy storm that year disconnected it from Russia's Krasnodarskii Krai, which is inhabited in part by the Kuban Cossacks. In 1941, Tuzla became an administrative part of Crimea; in 1954, Crimea was ceded to Soviet Ukraine. Thus, following the break-up of the Soviet Union, Ukraine considered Tuzla to be its own territory.

A dozen families of fishermen - Ukrainian citizens - live on the islet, which also hosts several holiday hotels belonging to the port of Kerch on the Crimean Peninsula. The Tuzla islet is some 7 kilometers long and 500 meters wide.

Ukrainian and Russian media seem to be rather confused as to why the construction of the dam was started and who authorized it. Several versions exist. According to one, the decision was made by an unspecified self-government body of the Kuban Cossacks in the Taman Raion of Krasnodarskii Krai, who reportedly want to stop water from the Taman Bay mixing with the much saltier water from the Black Sea. The Kuban Cossacks are supposedly concerned with the salinization of their environment, which makes it impossible for them to breed certain species of fish that are used to fresher waters.

According to this version of events, the builders of the dam - who reportedly include a lot of non-salaried Kuban Cossack activists - are going to stop their building effort several meters before Ukraine's border.

But the much-respected Zerkalo Nedeli weekly in Kyiv suggests a slightly different version: the dam project is secretly supported by local businessmen from Crimea and Krasnodarskii Krai, who allegedly want to urge both Moscow and Kyiv to build a more solid connection between Crimea and Russia - a bridge between Tuzla and Kerch.

The dam project is reportedly supported by the leader of the Crimean Communists, Ukrainian National Deputy Leonid Hrach, who is known for his various ideas to make trade and other contacts between Crimea and Russia more intense. These ideas include not only building a bridge over the Kerch Strait, but also, surprisingly, laying a water pipeline along this bridge. Zerkalo Nedeli suggests that Mr. Hrach may be interested in piping cheap alcohol from Ossetia into Crimea.

However, the Tuzla controversy may also have more serious consequences, among them political, economic and military. First, Ukraine and Russia for many years have been at loggerheads regarding the delimitation of the border in the Azov Sea in general and Kerch Strait in particular. More than 100 oil and natural gas deposits have been discovered in the Azov Sea. Their exploitation by Russia or Ukraine, with no delimitated border between them, carries the potential risk of a full-scale international row over their sea frontier.

Second, Kerch Strait is fairly shallow; big ships can navigate the strait only through an artificially made fairway that is administered and controlled by Crimea's port of Kerch. It is estimated that the Kerch administration earns up to $180 million annually for letting Russian and other ships enter the Azov Sea.

Moreover, the Tuzla islet has a strategic military importance - as long as Kyiv controls it, it also controls the traffic between the Black Sea and the Azov Sea, including that of naval vessels.

Some Ukrainian politicians and journalists have speculated that the Kremlin has decided to reconnect Tuzla with the Russian mainland and take the islet under its administration, thus gaining more control over the navigation in Kerch Strait.

"The Russian action on Tuzla is primarily a test of Ukraine's capability to defend its territorial integrity and an illustration of [Moscow's intent] to swallow Ukraine as a whole - through the single economic space - or in parts, [by taking] Tuzla and Sevastopol," Borys Bespalyi, a deputy from the opposition Our Ukraine bloc, told UNIAN.

Some are more cautious in their assessment of the dam controversy, but no less far-sighted. Their view of the controversy derives from a statement by the Krasnodarskii Krai governor earlier this month, who said on a Russian television channel that the construction of the dam is being carried out following an accord reached between Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin during their meeting in September. According to this theory, when the dam is only a few meters from the islet, Mr. Kuchma will personally arrive at Tuzla and "order" that the construction is stopped, thus quashing the potential border conflict between the two countries and securing the country's territorial integrity. This version implies a conspiracy between Presidents Kuchma and Putin - allegedly oriented toward boosting Mr. Kuchma's rating in Ukraine and making a third presidential term possible for him.

Mr. Kuchma said on October 6 that the construction of the dam involves a "misunderstanding" rather than "politics." Asked whether this situation may provoke a border conflict with Russia, he said he refused to believe such a development would occur. Last week in Moscow, Ukraine's Foreign Affairs Minister Kostyantyn Gryshchenko spoke with Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov and Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Kasianov on the dam controversy. No details of the talks have been released.

The Verkhovna Rada adopted a statement on October 14 appealing to the Russian parliament to intervene in the construction of the dam in order to stop any "unilateral actions" that may contradict "the spirit of strategic partnership of the two countries." In the event the dam project is continued, the Ukrainian legislature pledged "to initiate all measures envisaged by the norms of international law to protect a state's territorial sovereignty."

Jan Maksymiuk is the Belarus, Ukraine and Poland specialist on the staff of RFE/RL Newsline.

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