Ukraine Moves to Take Over Black Sea Fleet

Ukrainian President Leonid M. Kravchuk, in a move certain to aggravate the already sharp tensions between his country and Russia, issued a decree Monday taking over the former Soviet Black Sea Fleet and putting all military and naval forces on Ukrainian territory under his government.

Kravchuk said Ukraine will immediately begin forming its own navy, destined to be one of the largest in Europe, on the basis of the Black Sea Fleet, a potent force of 90,000 men, 345 surface ships, 28 submarines and 159 warplanes, which Russia also claims as its inheritance from the former Soviet Union.

Despite stern warnings last week from Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin that Moscow would move immediately to counter such action, Kravchuk declared that it is Russia that is interfering in Ukrainian affairs, not vice versa, in continuing to claim ownership of the fleet, which is based largely in Ukrainian ports.

Ukraine and Russia now find themselves in full confrontation over an issue that for each is one of national pride, of geostrategic importance and, finally, of wealth--for the sheer value of the fleet, which is as large as that of Britain or France.

And with this angry confrontation comes the real risk that the fissures within the Commonwealth of Independent States, which groups Russia, Ukraine and nine other former Soviet republics, will grow so deep and permanent that the few ties remaining among them will snap.

Kravchuk took care, however, to reaffirm Ukraine’s commitment to joint Commonwealth control over nuclear weapons, declaring that while Ukraine was assuming administrative control over the army, navy and air force units that have strategic and tactical nuclear weapons, operational control will still rest with the Commonwealth, as agreed earlier.

However, Col. Gen. Konstantin Morozov, the Ukrainian defense minister, said in an evening news broadcast in Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, that even this operational control would be transitional. As Ukraine shipped its nuclear weapons, tactical and then strategic, to Russia for destruction, he said, the units would come under Ukrainian command.

This follows the Ukrainian interpretation of an agreement, reached in December, that was meant to defuse the issue by awarding “non-strategic forces” to the republic where they were stationed.

Ukraine took this to mean all ships of the Black Sea Fleet without nuclear weapons, whatever their size, while Russia insisted that the main warships were strategic because of their ability to project power and that only coastal vessels were truly “non-strategic.”

Ukraine is particularly insistent on creating its own armed forces for the most basic of all military reasons: to protect its integrity as a state. It has now sworn in about half a million men but feels the task incomplete as long as there is a foreign army on its territory, notably the Russian-dominated Commonwealth forces.

Amid all the bickering, however, Kravchuk indicated that Ukraine would probably be satisfied with a third of the fleet--once Russia accepted the Ukrainian interpretation of what rightfully belongs to it.

“Any attempt by a foreign state to take the Black Sea Fleet under its jurisdiction will be considered as interference in independent Ukraine’s internal affairs,” the Ukrainian government had said in response to Yeltsin’s warning that he would “nationalize” the fleet if Kiev tried to do so.

The practical intent of Kravchuk’s decree, distributed by the Ukrainian news agency Ukrinform, appeared to be to force Russia into renewed negotiations to divide the Black Sea Fleet, and Morozov said that Kiev wants to discuss the future not only of the navy but of the other former Soviet armed forces on Ukrainian territory.

“On the basis of the Black Sea Fleet deployed on the territory of the republic, it is envisaged to create the naval forces of Ukraine,” Kravchuk declared in his decree, “and the Defense Ministry is to begin forming organs to manage the Ukrainian navy, coordinating with the commander of the Commonwealth’s joint forces the list of warships and units that are temporarily subordinated to the Commonwealth’s strategic command.”

Yeltsin had warned last week that such a unilateral Ukrainian action would bring Russian retaliation, and Kravchuk replied Sunday that his country would not be intimidated and would take “adequate” measures to counter Russian takeover of the fleet.

“Trying to scare Ukraine is imprudent and fruitless,” Kravchuk said in an interview on Russian Television.

In supporting Kravchuk’s action, the leadership of the Ukrainian Parliament contended that, in fact, the country was taking only a portion of what rightfully belonged to it.

“Ukraine has made a substantial contribution to the building of the Baltic, Northern Pacific and Black Sea fleets of the former Soviet Union,” the legislative leadership said in a statement distributed by Ukrinform.

“Having the right to inherit its share of all the navy of the former Soviet Union, Ukraine lays claims only on the part of the Black Sea Fleet that is registered in its ports--and that is much less than the Ukrainian contribution to the navy.”

The legislators urged Kravchuk to respond to what they called Russian “attempts to aggravate and destabilize the situation” and generate further tensions over the fleet, and they proclaimed their “outrage” over the weekend trip by Alexander V. Rutskoi, the Russian vice president, to the former Soviet naval base at Sevastopol to rally officers stationed there to Russia.

Special correspondent Alex Shprintsen, in Kiev, contributed to this report.