Vladimir Putin, who had just made a pre-inauguration tour of Europe and hence not yet shed the title acting president (at any rate, the official documents still featured this phrase), said in Sevastopol he “could not help but visit the Black Sea Fleet.”
Of course, from all points of view: first, he must take personally survey his domains, with the Black Sea Fleet being quite an important piece of Russia; secondly, as Leonid Kuchma noted onboard the cruiser Moskva, “We should return to our common roots and sacred places from time to time, and now this time has come”
“One such sacred place is, beyond all doubt, Sevastopol,” Mr. Putin added.
This can be construed as Mr. Putin’s indirect answer to the sparse picketers carrying a placard “We surrender to Russia!” The point is the word “common” is already a step forward compared to the former, too straightforward, stand of Yuri Luzhkov, in which Sevastopol is simply called a Russian city. Many Sevastopol residents noted that the pragmatic Russia had, at last, grown a sober head taller, although Putin is shorter than Yeltsin. Moreover, a nearby line of Black Sea Fleet sailors was holding a white (perhaps they made it by hand) banner reading “The Black Sea Fleet of Ukraine and Russia means a partnership for peace.” So it is still an open question who is surrendering to whom.
There is also an augur in that the Russian president-elect objected to a correspondent who called his visit “significant.” He said, “This is a routine, not significant, visit.” So the expectations that the Russians will immediately bring up at this summit the question of re-carving the bays and revising the lease terms for the Sevastopol naval base did not come true: Mr. Putin said unambiguously, “As to the status of the Black Sea Fleet, it has been determined, and no changes in this sense are in sight.”
This is all that this very short routine visit of Mr. Putin to Sevastopol had to do with the fleet, Russia, and the Russian-Ukrainian dialogue. However, the visit is immeasurably more important in another respect: since the collapse of the USSR, it is the FIRST visit of a Russian president to the Ukrainian, but so glorious and memorable for Russia, city of Sevastopol which undoubtedly looked forward to the coming of none other than the “commander-in-chief of all Russia” and the chief “practically independent person” of Ukraine in order to get, at last, answers to their questions, which previously neither Moscow Mayor Luzhkov, nor Marshal Sergeyev, nor General Kuzmuk, nor Admiral Yezhel could do. To this end, Sevastopol had invited Boris Yeltsin and Leonid Kuchma long ago to visit their city together, but the former had no time. Now they were lucky! This visit thus put the provincial seaside Sevastopol on a par with such well-known capitals as Minsk, London, Kyiv, and Moscow. Watching Mr. Kuchma and Mr. Putin laying flowers to the monument of the defenders of THIS city, gliding across the main bight of THIS city on an ordinary boat under the gun salute in their honor (how had one of them felt after flying on a fighter-plane and sailing on a submarine?), and then going away on their own business — Mr. Kuchma to conduct a meeting at the administration of THIS city, and Mr. Putin to visit the headquarters of the Black Sea Fleet so desirous of staying behind in THIS city, — I saw that the main actors and protagonists of this day (incidentally, Mr. Kuchma called it “such a sunny and joyful day full of hope for the future”) were not so much the Presidents as THIS city, Sevastopol, itself, already tired of waiting throughout the nine post-Soviet years.
Shrewd observers could notice that the very psychological perception of this city by the two countries is changing. While formerly politicians of the Luzhkov and Zatulin type tried to put Sevastopol in the position of a servant, which resulted in the city administration trying to serve, albeit unintentionally, two masters (for its well-being depended in one way or another on both), now there is an open and pragmatic intention of the two masters to treat it “as a sacred place” and serve this city which tries to keep both the Ukrainian Navy and the Russian Black Sea Fleet afloat. Say what you will, both fleets’ ships are dear to the heart.
On the one hand, Russia, in the person of its first post-Soviet pragmatist Vladimir Putin, may have become aware that it is impossible to solve the problem of its full- fledged presence on the Black Sea theater and its proximity to the Mediterranean straits with Luzhkov’s assaults, schools, and exclamations. One must raise greatly the level of Ukrainian-Russian strategic relations. So there is no doubt that, when Russia soon begins, as announced, to work out a new defense concept, the president- elect’s statement that “If they (NATO) won’t invite Russia in, we will naturally watch closely NATO’s expansion to the East” will have a most direct bearing on Sevastopol. Russia, which “did and does treat this problem on the basis of its national interests,” should at least show respect for the city which supports the life of the Black Sea Fleet, “the guarantor of the security of its southern borders,” and its strategic partner, the Ukrainian Navy. In this respect, Mr. Putin put an end to the past attempts (the latest of them was perhaps the interview of the fleet’s commander, Admiral Vladimir Komoyedov) to apply more pressure to and dress down the strategic partner instead of simply paying him.
While formerly Ukrainian proposals were rejected only because they were Ukrainian, now Mr. Putin has accepted without apparent misgivings, as he said himself, Viktor Yushchenko’s offer to switch over from barter to settlements based on money alone. This is, incidentally, the idea Sevastopol experts advanced long ago. Let us recall that it is they who have always refused to understand why the “strategic partners” treat Sevastopol as a stepdaughter. Sevastopol dwellers, already eager to nurse from two mothers but in fact deprived of both and in addition to experiencing water, electricity, and gas shortages, eyeing their idle enterprises, were truly puzzled.
First deputy chairman of the Sevastopol city administration, Valentyn Borysov, told The Day that Mr. Putin, still prime minister of Russia, had signed three agreements between the governments of Russia and Ukraine aimed at a more successful fulfillment of the Black Sea Fleet general agreement. “Now Sevastopol hopes that Vladimir Putin,” he says, “having familiarized himself with the city’s problems engendered, above all, by the presence of the Black Sea Fleet, will continue his constructive line and make more decisions that nobody but the president can make in Russia.” Valentyn Borysov cited, among the problems of this level, first, participation of the Russian Federation in the city’s socioeconomic development connected with the basing of the Black Sea Fleet; secondly, compensation by Russia for the funds Sevastopol spent to ensure equal rights for Russian servicemen and their families; and, thirdly, the signing of a number of supplementary protocols to the basic agreement. “Now we must not think about the renewal of the treaty or a new carving up of the bays but get down to the solution of the numerous urgent legal problems connected with the basing of the fleet.” For example, it is necessary to take stock in strictly legal terms of the Black Sea Fleet bases and draw up certificates to keep them free of ecological destruction and pollution. For sometimes we have to reclaim the places the fleet left, so that at least something could live there.
The first step toward cooperation has already been taken. As Oleksandr Skrypnychenko, press service chief of the Sevastopol City Administration, told journalists, the Black Sea Fleet and the city have recently signed an agreement on treating Sevastopol war veterans in the fleet hospital, to which the fleet command had objected to for three years. The administration allocated UAH 500,000 for this. Leonid Zhunko, the administration chief, has also signed recently a cooperation agreement with St. Petersburg city authorities, which will greatly promote scientific development and the joint work of industrial enterprises, retail trade, and recreational facilities.
Mr. Borysov also noted that although President Kuchma, on his part, pays great attention to the city — quite recently, he issued a decree and a series of instructions to speed up the socioeconomic development of Sevastopol — there are still many questions requiring intervention by the Ukrainian President. First, it was only presidential assistance in forming the city budget that allowed Sevastopol, according to Mr. Borysov, to survive in the 1999 crisis, when military industrial enterprises, formerly comprising the basis of the city budget system, were completely paralyzed. In this area, the President is helping develop a number of major socioeconomic programs. This includes the gasification of northern Sevastopol, completion of the construction of southern purification installations, and the early development and adoption of the law On the Status of Sevastopol.
Of paramount importance will be a special program of management for the city’s sea territory under development for four years. The city budget will be able to attract up to UAH 100 million annual revenue, owing to sea space management reform alone. But, to do so, the city administration must be vested with powers to manage the adjacent sea.
Among the urgent problems, according to Mr. Borysov, also are the development of a special Ukrainian Cabinet program to ensure the trouble-free existence of Sevastopol with both the Ukrainian Navy and the Russian Black Sea Fleet based in it. Still unsolved remain a number of problems connected with public utilities: the construction of a gas pipeline from the North Side to the downtown and stabilization of the work of fishing enterprises. The president also supports domestic industrial enterprises, for example, the Sergo Ordzhonikidze Plant, where we launch the production of fishing vessels, the continuation of the construction of such public utility facilities as the Martynivsky and Vorontsovsky sewerage mainlines, now in an unsatisfactory technical condition and hazardous to the city’s environment. After Mr. Kuchma visits the city, these problems will be placed under special supervision, Mr. Borysov believes.
