Russia's Federation Council approves treaty with Ukraine (02/21/99)

Russia's Federation Council approves treaty with Ukraine

by Pavel Polityuk
Special to The Ukrainian Weekly

KYIV - Ukrainian officials on February 7 welcomed the ratification of the bilateral friendship treaty by Russia's Federation Council, or upper house of Parliament - despite preconditions related to treaties on the Black Sea Fleet - as a long-awaited confirmation from its powerful neighbor of Ukraine's territorial integrity.

But nationalist factions in the Verkhovna Rada say those agreements, which provide for the basing of Russia's Black Sea Fleet on Crimea, violate the Constitution of Ukraine, which does not allow foreign military bases on its territory.

"It was a historic event in Ukrainian-Russian relationship," Ukraine's President Leonid Kuchma said of the ratification in an interview with the Moscow-based television channel ORT. "It was a victory of Ukrainian and Russian political powers that aim to develop our relations in the spirit of friendship," he said.

"In the president's opinion, this agreement is very important because it strengthens the basic directions of relations between Ukraine and Russia, and confirms the territorial integrity and independence of Ukraine," Mr. Kuchma's spokesman, Oleksander Martynenko, told a briefing in Kyiv.

The Federation Council approved the controversial treaty with Ukraine on February 7, but said its Slavic neighbor must first approve treaties on the Black Sea Fleet for it to take effect. The Federation Council's decision followed an appeal to Russian deputies by Prime Minister Yevgeni Primakov, but was swiftly condemned by Russian nationalists as a betrayal of Russian interests.

A total of 106 deputies approved the treaty, and 25 voted against. They also resolved that the treaty could come into force only after the Ukrainian Parliament approves three separate accords on the Black Sea Fleet, which is based on the Crimean peninsula in southern Ukraine.

"Does everything in our relations with Ukraine please us? No, not everything ... (But) non-ratification of the treaty would create conditions that would leave Russia and Ukraine on opposite sides of the barricades," a Russian news agency quoted Prime Minister Primakov as saying to the Federation Council.

Mr. Primakov hailed the Federation Council's vote as "a triumph for common sense."

Russia's President Boris Yeltsin and Ukraine's President Leonid Kuchma also welcomed the outcome of the vote. In a telephone conversation, Mr. Kuchma told Mr. Yeltsin he sees no obstacles to Ukraine's ratification of the three fleet agreements.

Presidents Yeltsin and Kuchma had signed the Treaty on Friendship, Cooperation and Partnership in May 1997; the document was approved by the Ukrainian legislature in December 1997 and by the Duma, the lower house of Russia's Parliament, in December 1998.

The Ukrainian and Russian prime ministers have already signed three separate treaties on the former Soviet Black Sea Fleet, which cleared the way for the broader friendship treaty.

Under the treaties Russia would lease the Crimean port of Sevastopol for 20 years and base its share of the former Soviet Black Sea Fleet there.

Russian nationalists have repeatedly questioned Ukraine's rights to the heavily Russian-populated Crimean peninsula, a former Russian province formally signed over to Ukraine in 1954 by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev.

Of particular concern to some politicians, notably Moscow Mayor Yurii Luzhkov, a presidential hopeful is the status of the Crimean city of Sevastopol, home to the once-proud Soviet fleet.

Now the rusting Black Sea Fleet remains the main problem hampering post-Soviet relations between Moscow and Kyiv.

"I do not see a tragedy here," said President Kuchma, speaking about the conditions set down by the Federation Council. "I think we will not wait a long time for Ukraine to ratify these treaties."

"The big treaty [as the friendship treaty is referred to] had been prepared together with the Black Sea Fleet's accords," he added.

"I welcome the ratification, but disapprove of the conditions set by Russia's legislature," said Hennadii Udovenko, Ukraine's former foreign affairs minister and candidate from Rukh for Ukraine's presidency in elections scheduled for October 1999.

Volodymyr Filenko, a leader of the parliamentary faction of the National Democratic Party, said the ratification is at once "a confirmation of the strong friendship between the Ukrainian and Russian people" for leftists in the Verkhovna Rada and "a confirmation of Ukrainian independence" for right-wing deputies.

| Home Page |