Russia and Ukraine. Crimean wars

What Russia's tetchy relations with Ukraine may mean for Ukraine's election

OUTSIDE the headquarters of the Russian Black Sea fleet in Sebastopol are two sets of tents. One encampment is protesting against the fleet's behaviour in Ukraine. The other is protesting against the first, but also over a geographical injustice. Sebastopol, says Alexsandr, "has always been Russian...it will never be Ukrainian." He and his friends are "defending our interests against the orange lot."

Even in a country as fractured as Ukraine, Sebastopol and the Crimea are special. The peninsula was annexed by Catherine the Great in 1783. Monuments abound to the city's two great sieges, in the 1850s and 1940s. Khrushchev handed the Crimea to Ukraine only in 1954, when internal Soviet borders seemed trivial. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, most of the population was ethnic Russian, the Tatars who once predominated having been deported by Stalin. Crimea secured autonomous status within the new Ukrainian state. But the Russians kept most of the Soviet Black Sea fleet.

A special case, then, but also an exemplary one. Sebastopol epitomises both the mess left by the post-Soviet divorce, and how the relationship between Russia and Ukraine can degenerate into a family quarrel. It also shows, ahead of next month's parliamentary election, how that relationship influences Ukrainian politics.

Apart from their flags, the ships of the Russian and Ukrainian fleets in the harbours around Sebastopol are hard to distinguish. Russia has some 80 vessels and 15,000 servicemen in Ukraine. The Russians reckon that they contribute around a quarter of the local budget. But naval officers complain, with the usual exasperation of military men towards politicians, that agreements reached about the fleet in the 1990s are coming unstuck.

The new-year gas dispute between Ukraine and Russia has spawned assorted other niggles. One concerns Crimean facilities. A Russian-run lighthouse was occupied last month by Ukrainian students (paid agitators, say the Russians; lies, say the students). Ukraine's government is murmuring about charging "market" rates for the Sebastopol base to match the higher gas prices Russia is now getting. Put up the rent, say Russian hawks, and Ukraine's hold on Crimea will be jeopardised. (A recent poll found that 31% of Russians think taking the Crimea back should be a key issue in bilateral relations.) Although they are preparing another base on their coast, the Russians also hope that, by 2017, when the Crimean lease is up, Ukraine will have a friendlier government.

If the residents of Sebastopol have their way, they will get one. Local feeling about the fleet dispute reveals how divided Ukraine remains, over a year after the orange revolution swept Victor Yushchenko to the presidency. Vadim Kolesnichenko, of the Party of the Regions, led by Victor Yanukovich, whom Mr Yushchenko defeated, says that Ukraine is acting like a wounded bear, which spurns its benefactor (Russia) when it heals. Gennady Basov, an activist for the interests of Crimean Russians, is less partisan but equally angry. Under Mr Yushchenko, he says, Russian culture and the Russian language--the only one for many Crimeans--are being compromised.

The "orange lot" try to be upbeat. Valery Ivanov, an ex-naval officer and Sebastopol chief of Our Ukraine, Mr Yushchenko's party, says things have improved since 2004, when "if you waved an orange flag in the street you were beaten with sticks and stones". Now, he says, "Yushchenko's ideas are conquering the heart of Sebastopol"; it's just that the old, corrupt patronage networks take time to dismantle. "It's all lies," he says of the language allegations. Outside his tent, Timur Litvin of the Student Brotherhood, who was involved in the lighthouse occupation, concedes that few locals agree with him.

Developments in Ukrainian politics have soured relations with Russia, but Russia also continues to influence Ukrainian politics. Wrangling over the supply of gas to Ukraine goes on: each government now claims that its country has no stake in the shady company that was the main beneficiary of last month's deal over gas prices. Oddly, perhaps, given his pro-Russian leaning, the gas affair has boosted the pre-election standing of Mr Yanukovich.

The allegations of vote-rigging and worse aimed at Mr Yanukovich in 2004 would have sunk most western politicians. But, with his pledge to make Russian an official language and to mend ties with Moscow, and his still-solid support in south and east Ukraine, Mr Yanukovich's party is now leading in the polls. Some observers say that Rinat Akhmetov, an oligarch who is running for parliament, is the party's real boss. In Sebastopol, Mr Kolesnichenko argues variously that the criminal convictions that embarrassed Mr Yanukovich in 2004 have been quashed; that they were unexceptional in the Soviet Union; or that they were a product of his tough upbringing. Mr Yanukovich's life, says Mr Kolesnichenko, should be admired as a kind of American dream.

The Party of the Regions will almost certainly win the most seats in next month's election. Under a new constitution, the parliament will nominate a newly empowered prime minister. The orange coalition fell apart last year under the weight of corruption scandals and personal rivalries. After the vote, Mr Yushchenko's party may form a government with Yulia Timoshenko, the prime minister whom the president sacked last year; there are ongoing efforts to reconcile the two factions. But if they fail, Mr Yanukovich may yet strike his own deal with one of them. "Nobody can predict the exact configuration," comments Olexiy Haran of the Eurasia Foundation.

What is predictable is that, if Mr Yanukovich is frozen out, his supporters will try to emulate their orange rivals. After all, Mr Yushchenko's acolytes have no monopoly on the new assertiveness that the revolution fostered. Will there be tents in Sebastopol? "No doubt," says Mr Kolesnichenko, "and not only tents."

The status of the Crimea within Ukraine causes tensions with Russia.