ANALYSIS: Russian-Ukrainian strategic partnership appears to be in ruins due to Tuzla issue (11/02/03)

ANALYSIS

Russian-Ukrainian strategic partnership appears to be in ruins due to Tuzla issue

by Taras Kuzio
RFE/RL Newsline

The recent dispute over the tiny Tuzla Island in the Kerch Strait, the entrance to the Azov Sea, should not be happening. The Ukrainian-Russian "strategic partnership" - which was devoid of real content during Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma's first term in office and under Russian President Boris Yeltsin - was beginning to be filled with some substance during Mr. Kuchma's second term and under Russian President Vladimir Putin. As the Kuchmagate crisis unfolded after November 2000 and the reformist government of Prime Minister Viktor Yushchenko was removed in April 2001, Ukraine's multi-vector foreign policy was reoriented toward Russia and the CIS.

For Moscow, the crowning achievements of this reorientation came this year. Last year, 2002, was designated the "Year of Russia in Ukraine," and in January 2003 Mr. Kuchma became the first non-Russian leader in the Commonwealth of Independent States to be elected head of the CIS Council of Heads of State. On September 17 Ukraine, Russia, Kazakstan and Belarus signed the CIS agreement on the Single Economic Space (SES), only 12 days prior to the beginning of the territorial conflict over Tuzla.

Ukraine's reorientation toward Russia and the CIS seemed set to continue. President Kuchma desperately needs President Putin's support in the October 2004 presidential election in order to ensure that a suitable successor - if indeed a suitable one can be found - is elected. One way to achieve this was to again play the Russian card in eastern Ukraine, a tactic Mr. Kuchma successfully used in the 1994 presidential election.

This can now be ruled out. Pro-Kuchma Crimean Prime Minister Serhii Kunitsyn lamented this week: "I don't know whose idea it was to build the dam, but I do know that it is ruining everything achieved during the Year of Russia in Ukraine."

As the crisis escalated, calls from within Ukraine's elites to speed up steps to join NATO - an objective first outlined in a presidential decree in July 2002 - became more frequent. Our Ukraine Deputy Yurii Yekhanurov, chairman of the Verkhovna Rada's Industrial Policy and Enterprise Committee, told Parliament on October 22 that Ukraine should rebuild a small nuclear deterrent as the only way to deter similar threats to Ukraine's territorial integrity.

In a secret presidential decree dated October 21, Mr. Kuchma outlined steps to be taken to defend Ukraine's territorial integrity. Those steps included Ukraine quitting the recently agreed-upon SES if Russia attempts to encroach on its territory. Other non-military steps include appealing to the declared nuclear powers, who provided "security assurances" in return for Ukraine's nuclear disarmament in 1994-1996, the United Nations Security Council, NATO and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. A further step outlined in the decree was for the Foreign Affairs Ministry to unilaterally declare the Kerch Strait and the Azov Sea internal Ukrainian waters.

Different approaches to the status of these waters lie at the heart of the conflict. Ukraine has always been for a territorial status quo; it defends its territorial integrity based on everything it inherited from Soviet Ukraine. Ukrainian officials reminded their Russian colleagues that copies of Soviet documents showing Ukraine's right to Tuzla exist in both Kyiv and Moscow. The Ukrainian side was infuriated by Russia's claims that it does not possess and is unaware of any such documents. Russia has also always insisted that there are no legal documents proving that the port of Sevastopol was transferred together with Crimea to Soviet Ukraine in 1954.

Russia's attitude toward CIS "internal" borders remains ambivalent. After years of territorial demands on Crimea and the port of Sevastopol, Russia agreed to sign a treaty that recognized Ukraine's borders only in May 1997. It took Russia nearly two more years for both houses of its legislature to ratify the treaty - a step that was taken only after the Verkhovna Rada itself ratified Crimea's non-separatist constitution.

Then, another five years were required (1999-2003) to complete work on delimiting the Ukrainian-Russian border. In that agreement, Kyiv bowed to Russian pressure to define the Azov Sea as joint "internal waters," a definition Russia has supported also in the Caspian.

But Russia continues to reject any demarcation of its border with Ukraine, as it does with other CIS states. Russia defines "internal" and "external" (i.e., the former Soviet, except vis-à-vis the Baltic states) borders differently. To define them in the same manner would be to abandon the view of the CIS as the not-foreign "near abroad."

President Kuchma was criticized in Ukraine earlier this year for succumbing to Russian pressure on the Azov Sea. By agreeing that the Azov Sea is joint internal waters, he might have sent the wrong signal to Russia over the entrance to the Azov Sea. Ukraine's control of Tuzla and the Kerch Strait gives it the ability to control the entrance to the Azov, from which it obtains $150 million per year in fees from ships.

This, then, explains the incomprehension of both sides at the speed with which the conflict has escalated. Despite meeting regularly over the last three years for "no-neck-tie summits," Presidents Kuchma and Putin failed to contact each other until after Mr. Kuchma had left for Latin America on October 20. Mr. Kuchma returned from what was to be a 10-day tour on October 22 to oversee the handling of the Tuzla dispute and Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych similarly cancelled a visit to the Baltic states. President Kuchma visited Tuzla on October 23 to check its defenses, and that day construction of the dam was halted just 100 meters from the island.

The Russian leadership has miscalculated in two respects. First, Ukraine's reorientation eastward does not mean Mr. Kuchma or his oligarch allies entertain the idea of vassal status. Similar miscalculations have even thwarted attempts to integrate Russia and Belarus. Second, Russia has continually underestimated Ukraine's readiness to defend its territorial integrity, first by diplomatic and even by military means. A border guard unit was hastily deployed on Tuzla Island immediately after construction of the dam began. The unit is backed up by the Internal Affairs Ministry's special forces, with naval units on stand-by. An air defense exercise also been held on the Kerch Strait. On the Russian side, there are border troops and Cossacks.

Support for Ukraine's territorial integrity has always existed across the entire political spectrum, from left to right. Communist Party leader Petro Symonenko even accused Mr. Kuchma of being a "traitor" for leaving Ukraine during the crisis.

The current standoff reflects the degree to which any talk of a Russian-Ukrainian "strategic partnership" will remain devoid of real content until both sides feel more confident about their respective national identities.

Dr. Taras Kuzio is a resident fellow at the Center for Russian and East European Studies, University of Toronto.

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