Ukraine Gains Edge in Fight for Crimea : Nationalism: Separatists seeking ties to Russia lose some of their popularity because of mismanagement.

When Crimean leader Yuri A. Meshkov came to Leonid D. Kuchma’s inauguration as Ukraine’s president last summer, his presence caused excited whispers in the gallery.

There was no way that the ardently pro-Russian separatist president of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula would have deigned to visit Kiev had Kuchma’s predecessor, Leonid M. Kravchuk, won reelection.

After electing Meshkov in January, 1994, Crimean voters gave his separatist party, called the Russian Party of Crimea, a majority in their autonomous Parliament. Kuchma’s campaign pledge of closer ties between Ukraine and Russia made the goal of most Crimean separatists--reunion with Russia--seem all the more attainable.

But as Kuchma enters his second year in office, Russia and Ukraine are still far from reconciliation. Worse for the separatists, there is no more Crimean presidency, little Crimean autonomy and, judging by local elections last month, no longer much popular demand for either.

Not one candidate from the Russian Party was chosen last month to head the Black Sea peninsula’s regional councils. Of the 13 mayors elected, all supported their own subordination to the Ukrainian president.

And last week, after Crimean Fire Chief Yevhen Supruniuk was elected chairman of the peninsula’s Parliament, replacing separatist Sergei Tsekov, he came here to swear fealty to Kuchma.

“Crimea’s Parliament will make no decisions and pay no visits to Moscow without getting the go-ahead from Ukraine,” Supruniuk told the Interfax-Ukraine news agency.

Supruniuk’s election by 58 out of 89 Crimean lawmakers was a watershed in Kuchma’s campaign to turn Crimea from a flash point of ethnic tension to a submissive Ukrainian province.

“Kuchma moved decisively with a carrot-and-stick policy when the opportunity presented itself,” said Markian Bilynskyj, director of Kiev’s Pylyp Orkyk Institute for Democracy.

Crimean separatists had discredited themselves after a year of economic and political mismanagement of the peninsula’s autonomous government, but Kuchma waited to make his move until Russia was bogged down in its war against Chechen separatists and unable to offer support to the Crimeans.

When he struck in March, he eliminated the peninsula’s presidency, slashed its autonomy and subordinated its government to Kiev. No one rallied to the separatists’ defense except small groups of demonstrators, mostly elderly women.

The carrot came later, when Ukraine poured the equivalent of $1.6 million in credit into Crimea’s economy, targeted at its moribund but potentially lucrative tourist industry.

The nearly 1,000 camps, hotels and health spas on the Vermont-sized peninsula are reeling from a triple blow: turbulent politics, inflation and post-Soviet borders and passports that make it harder for tourists to get to them.

Crimea, sheltered from cold winds by a range of mountains, once drew 13 million vacationers a year, one-third of the Soviet Union’s “spa economy.” Last year, there were 2.6 million.

Part of the Ukrainian credit will pay for a new water pipeline to the coast, where a two-year water shortage has contributed to the drop in tourism.

Last month, Kuchma joined in celebrating the 70th anniversary of Artek, a children’s resort near Yalta, in a personal bid for the loyalty of the 2.7 million Crimeans--especially the 70% who are ethnic Russians.

The Russian Party’s electoral defeat may not reflect grass-roots disillusionment with the idea of reunion with Russia, cautioned Olha Len, an independent political analyst. “At this point, we can only talk about disappointment with [the party’s] ineptitude in resolving economic problems,” he said.

Despite having two privatization plans, Crimea is the only region of Ukraine not to have privatized a single piece of state property all year. Economic output is lower than the already dismal Ukrainian average.

Crimean Communists, who won three mayoralties last month, have taken up the Russian Party’s pro-Russian slogans in their quest for a revived Soviet Union. Those slogans could once again resonate at the grass-roots level if Kuchma fails, as the separatists did, to deliver economic stability and crack down on Crimea’s criminal gangs.

Experts warn that gang warfare could erupt into ethnic warfare. Crimean Tatars, a Turkic-speaking Muslim people who make up about 10% of the population, rioted last month to protest violence against their market vendors by Russian-speaking racketeers.