How to piss off Putin
Russian fleet must withdraw at lease end
miami.com
KIEV, Ukraine - (AP) -- Ukraine will not extend Russia's lease on the naval base where its Black Sea fleet is based, Foreign Minister Borys Tarasiuk said Friday.
Russia will have to withdraw its fleet when its lease runs out in 2017, Tarasiuk told journalists in the eastern Ukrainian city Dnipropetrovsk.
Ukraine's new government has said it has no plans to revoke the agreement, which allows Russia to base its fleet in the Ukrainian port city of Sevastopol.
A new Russian base currently being built at Novorossiisk, on Russia's Black Sea coast, is expected to be completed by 2010, but Russian officials insist they have no plans to move the headquarters from Sevastopol.
Extending Russia's lease on the base would violate Ukraine's constitution, Tarasiuk said, and therefore was not being considered. He didn't elaborate.
After several years of tense arguments following the 1991 Soviet collapse, Russia and Ukraine divided the former Soviet fleet of ships and agreed to jointly operate the Sevastopol base.
But Tarasiuk on Friday said Russia had breached the agreement, saying the violations ''carried a systematic character,'' Ukrainian news agencies reported.
Last month, Ukraine's Foreign Ministry complained when Russia landed a marine battalion on Ukraine's Crimean shoreline without what it said was proper permission. |
