Sevastopol clashes stoke Russia-Ukraine tension

UKRAINE:DOZENS OF ethnic Russians have clashed with Ukrainian sailors in the port city of Sevastopol, where tension is running high over the future of the Russian navy's powerful Black Sea Fleet and Kiev's bid to move out of Moscow's political orbit and join Nato, writes Daniel McLaughlin.

Fighting broke out as about 100 Russians disrupted a ceremony held by the Ukrainian navy in Sevastopol, a city controlled by Kiev but home to a Russian majority which largely resents government attempts to move closer to the West and reduce the Kremlin's historical influence over the region.

The clashes coincided with a Ukrainian court ruling that a six-metre (20ft) statue of Sevastopol's founder, Russian empress Catherine the Great, had been erected illegally by local Russians and could be subject to a demolition order. Many Ukrainians see Catherine as a foreign invader.

Ill-feeling between Sevastopol's 70 per cent Russian majority and its Ukrainian minority was stoked last month by calls from visiting Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov for the city to return to Kremlin control.

Ukraine subsequently banned Mr Luzhkov from entering the country, which has regularly clashed with the Kremlin in recent years over disruptions and price increases of fuel imports from Russia.

The Kremlin has been irked by Ukraine's bid to join Nato, which it believes is destabilising eastern Europe by admitting former Soviet states such as Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania and courting others like Georgia and Ukraine.

Speaking at a recent ceremony to mark the 225th anniversary of the founding of Sevastopol, Russian deputy prime minister Sergei Ivanov said Ukraine's accession to Nato could prompt Moscow to close military factories in the country and introduce a visa regime.

"I couldn't say for whom such a break-up would be more painful - for Russia or for Ukraine," Mr Ivanov said.

Ukrainian leaders have also unsettled Russia by insisting that its Black Sea fleet leave Sevastopol by 2017. That has outraged many Russians, who consider Sevastopol, and Ukraine's Crimean peninsula on which it stands, to be Russia's rightful territory.