Crimea Ignores Warnings, Declares Sovereignty : Europe: The strategic peninsula is already a major bone of contention between Russia and Ukraine. The move makes matters worse.

MOSCOW — Hurling a bombshell into Russian-Ukrainian relations, lawmakers in the Russian-dominated Crimea on Tuesday proclaimed their Black Sea peninsula a separate republic, ignoring Ukrainian warnings that the act could kindle ethnic war.

The Crimea, transferred from Russian control to Ukraine 38 years ago, has become the major bone of contention between the two Slavic neighbors, who have argued heatedly for months over the status of the ex-Soviet Black Sea Fleet based there.

Last week, the Parliament in Kiev adopted a law proclaiming the peninsula a largely autonomous, yet integral, part of Ukraine. Ukrainian President Leonid Kravchuk, on a visit to the United States when the Crimean legislature reacted, had appealed to lawmakers to show “wisdom, tolerance and social responsibility.”

“A majority of people in the Crimea voted for Ukraine’s independence as a unitary state Dec. 1, 1991,” Kravchuk recalled. “Therefore, I will never sit at the negotiating table with someone who wants to make the topic of such negotiations the possibility of dividing Ukraine’s territory.”

Russian nationalists, however, have been clamoring for the return of the land of 2.5 million people to Russia. The Ukrainian law passed April 29, although granting residents an unprecedented amount of self-government, did not placate many in the population, which is 70% Russian, who fear a “Ukrainization” of the peninsula.

Expressing “great concern and worry” over the deteriorating relations between Russia and Ukraine, Crimean lawmakers on Tuesday overwhelmingly adopted a declaration of “state autonomy of the Republic of the Crimea and creation of a sovereign state.”

“This means complete independence from Ukraine. The Crimea is becoming a normal state,” said Pavel B. Yevgrafov, head of the government legal department in the Crimea.

However, the word independence did not appear in the declaration, which instead used the vaguer term autonomy.

Ukrainian nationalists contend that the independence issue is a red herring anyway and that what the formerly Communist, largely conservative Crimean leadership really wants is to reunite the region of sun-dappled beaches and vineyards with Russia.

The deputies, meeting in the city of Simferopol, gave themselves a two-minute standing ovation after adopting the declaration 124 to 13, with 30 abstentions.

“Rapture, pure rapture. This is wonderful,” Yuri Meshkov, leader of the predominantly ethnic Russian “Republican Movement of the Crimea,” said enthusiastically.

The act is supposed to become binding when approved by the peninsula’s citizens in a referendum planned for Aug. 2. According to a recent poll by a local newspaper, 46% of the people support independence, while 12% are against and the rest undecided.

The Simferopol Parliament had convened to discuss the Ukrainian law on the Crimea, as well as a proposed constitution. But after stormy debate, deputies chose the more radical path of adopting the declaration. They also asked Ukrainian officials to open negotiations with them.

Reaction from Kravchuk in the United States was not immediately forthcoming, although there was speculation in Simferopol that he might dissolve the local Parliament and impose direct rule from Kiev. Other Ukrainian officials expressed sentiments ranging from nail-biting worry to outright rejection.

Vitalij Fesenko, a member of the Ukrainian Democratic Party in Simferopol and one of about 20 people inside the Crimean Parliament who publicly opposed passage of the act, said he and his allies were “pushed, shoved and threatened” by Meshkov’s supporters.

Serhij Holovatij, one of the few lawyers in the Ukrainian Parliament, said Crimean secession was only the first step in a deliberate policy to eat away at his country’s territorial integrity.

“All this happened according to a planned scenario,” said Ukrainian deputy Yuri Kostenko, a member of the commission on security and defense, in words that left no doubt that he was blaming Russia.

Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin has said he considers the Crimea to be part of Ukraine, but during a recent visit to Sevastopol, home to the Black Sea Fleet, Russian Vice President Alexander V. Rutskoi said Moscow was ready to recognize the Crimea as a separate country if its voters chose independence.

Ukrainian leaders, whose successful secessionist bid sealed the doom of the Soviet Union, contend that the Crimea cannot exist economically apart, ironically using the same argument they spurned when it was used to justify keeping the Soviet Union intact.

Ukrainian lawmaker Ihor Jukhnovsky said the Crimea is totally dependent on Ukraine for steel and is provided with $320 million worth of energy a year at prevailing world prices.

“I feel sorry for the people of the Crimea” if they pursue secession, Jukhnovsky said.

Russian nationalists charge that the 1954 “gift” of the Crimea--carried out under Soviet leader Nikita S. Khrushchev to mark three centuries of union between Russia and Ukraine--was flagrantly illegal, and thus void.

Andrei Ostroukh, a reporter in The Times’ Moscow bureau, and special correspondent Mary Mycio in Kiev contributed to this report.