ANALYSIS

Kyiv and the Power Struggle in Crimea

David R. Marples for Oxford Analytica

EVENT

On 31 May, the Crimean parliament backed down on a decision to dismiss the government of the Autonomous Republic, thereby ending for the moment a three-week political crisis. The decision followed meetings of President Leonid Kuchma with the Premier Serhii Kunitsyn and the chairman of the regional legislature, Leonid Hrach in both Crimea and Kyiv.

ANALYSIS

Kunitsyn’s problems began with the arrest of two Cabinet Ministers on 10 May for alleged abuses of their positions: Minister of Agriculture, Mykola Orlovsky and Minister of Finance Lyudmila Denisova. The latter maintained that her detention—which was very brief—was politically motivated (Krymskaya Pravda, 16 May 2000). According to Kunitsyn’s account, the Crimean government had committed itself to a business deal worth HR120 million with an e-mail agreement. Denisova refused to be bound by this agreement, which included the Black Sea Ban of Reconstruction and the "Slavyanskiy" Bank and took place when Mikhail Vitkov was the Minister of Finance. As a result of the refusal of Denisova to be bound by an agreement of a previous government, she has received death threats (these are not uncommon in Crimea—in February 1998, Aleksandr Safontsev, the first deputy prime minister of the autonomous republic, was assassinated when a bomb exploded near his car) and clearly her action alienated certain business circles in the region. Kunitsyn also refused to be bound by the financial deals made by his predecessors.

Clearly a sustained assault on the regional government was under way. On 24 May, the Crimean Parliament, headed by the Communist Party leader Hrach since May 1998, voted to dismiss the government of Kunitsyn by 68 votes to 20, thereby attaining more than the two-third majority required by the Constitution of Ukraine. In the murky world of Crimean politics, it is not always easy to discern the motives behind events, but in this case a power struggle has clearly been under way for some time. Kunitsyn has been Premier of the autonomous republic for just over two years. Formerly he was the mayor of Krasnoperekopsk and the leader of the People’s Democratic Party (NDP), which, after the Communist Party, was the largest political faction on the peninsula. The appointment of Kunitsyn was clearly a compromise: Hrach, a powerful figure in the Communist Party of Ukraine, agreed to the appointment in consultation with Ukrainian president Kuchma in order to ensure his own appointment as parliamentary chairman. Kuchma was evidently content to play off the two Crimean politicians rather than see a united front of the legislature and government that might be directed against Kyiv.

At that time, the summer of 1998, the economic situation in Crimea was catastrophic, with long backlogs for wage payments and a decline in living standards that exceeded considerably that in Ukraine as a whole. The decline in industrial output, for example, was ten times worse than in Ukraine. Kunitsyn, while hardly a radical reformer, was at least well disposed toward Kyiv and announced his intention to weed out corruption, which has plagued the economy of Crimea, where Russian business circles have long held extensive property and holdings, and which remains the prime vacation spot for the Russian business and political elite. In practice, however, the two sides have constantly fought for supremacy over the past two years and their actions mirror those of the early period of Crimean politics within post-independence Ukraine.

At stake ultimately is Crimea’s position within Ukraine and the rights of the Ukrainian president. Neither the position of republican Premier nor that of parliamentary chairman (Speaker) has been stable over the past nine years. In January 1994, Yurii Meshkov, leader of the Russia Bloc, was elected the first president of Crimea and immediately declared his intent to hold a local referendum on independence and to transfer the peninsula to the Russian ruble zone. Subsequently his party gained a majority in the Crimean parliament, but the president’s high-handedness soon led to a conflict with the then parliamentary speaker, Sergey Tsekov. In January 1995, with encouragement from some deputies in the Russian Duma, Crimea declared economic sovereignty prompting the Kuchma government to take prompt action to restore the status quo. On 17 March 1995, Kyiv annulled the constitution of Crimea and by the end of March Crimea was brought under the direct rule of the Ukrainian government, pending the creation of a new constitution that was acceptable to the political leadership in the Ukrainian capital. In June 1995, the troublesome Tsekov was replaced as parliamentary leader by a more conciliatory figure in Yevhen Suprunyuk.

The 1994-95 crisis was made more complex by the gradual return of the Crimean Tatars, whose descendants had been deported by the Stalin regime at the end of the Second World War but who now constitute more than 12% of the 2.2 million population—they tended to be more supportive of the Ukrainian government and opposed to Russian influence on the peninsula—and by the complex negotiations between Russia and Ukraine over the status of the port of Sevastopol and the future of the Black Sea fleet. The signing of a Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation between Russia and Ukraine in 1997, by which Russia agreed to recognize the existing territorial boundaries of Ukraine, including the Crimean peninsula ceded to Ukraine in 1954, greatly eased the situation and provided Kyiv with more room for manoeuvre. It did, however, leave behind a power vacuum and a complex sharing of responsibility between parliament and the local government. Even prior to the Kunitsyn-Hrach conflict, there was open confrontation. Thus, in early 1997, the parliament tried to remove the government from office but President Kuchma suspended the decision. However, both the then Speaker Vasyl Kyselyov and his successor from February 1997, Anatoly Hrytsenko, were moderates who were well disposed toward Kyiv. The appointment of Hrach on 14 May 1998 altered the picture dramatically.

In mid-December 1999, Kunitsyn engineered a split within the parliament, joining with deputies from the Zlahoda and Respublika caucuses and backing a motion, which succeeded by a narrow majority, to dismiss the presidium led by Hrach. This conflict ended when the Ukrainian government dispatched mediators to Simferopol on 17 December, but there have been several other occasions when the clash between Kunitsyn and Hrach came to a head. At issue essentially is the authority of Ukraine to deal with disputes in the autonomous republic. Several sources have pointed to the ambiguous nature of Article 136 of the Constitution of Ukraine, which stipulates that the Crimean parliament can appoint and dismiss the head of the local government with the "knowledge and consent" of the president of Ukraine. Yet if more than two-thirds of parliamentary delegates vote for such a decision, then the president, in theory, is obliged to agree to the decision. The Crimeans are thus taking advantage of a loophole in the Constitution that in effect allows them more authority than might appear on paper. Conversely, according to the head of the presidential administration, Volodymyr Lytvyn (Den’, 2 June 2000), the Ukrainian president has the option of appealing to the Constitutional Court on the grounds that there were procedural violations during the parliamentary debate.

President Kuchma, however, chose the route of negotiation and appears to have deflated this stage of the longstanding dispute without bringing about a constitutional crisis. The issue is a serious one because an appeal to the Constitutional Court would have been tantamount to circumventing the Constitution. In turn, had the Crimeans objected to presidential intervention, it is difficult to see how Ukraine could have resolved the situation by democratic means. The Crimean predicament reflected in miniature President Kuchma’s own problems with the parliament in Kyiv during his first term in office. The president’s authority over the Ukrainian Supreme Soviet has been greatly enhanced by the spring 2000 referendum whereas legally his authority over Crimea remains ambiguous.

Why was such a significant majority of deputies in favour of the removal of Kunitsyn? There appear to be several reasons. The Crimean government has begun an anti-corruption drive that has clearly caused some concern among business circles and that of property owners. It is also trying to distance itself from the business deals conducted by the previous government. The political impasse can be simplified to the pro-Russia outlook of Hrach versus the pro-Ukraine leaning government of Kunitsyn (though he is certainly not anti-Russian). Hrach himself, according to some observers, is seeking to build his own power base in Crimea. And lastly the NDP appears to be declining as a political force, thereby weakening the authority of the Crimean Premier. In turn, the Communists have been the most powerful faction in the parliament since the last elections but they failed to oust Kunitsyn, reportedly because of the strong moral support the Premier received from the president and from the state prosecutor of Ukraine, Myhailo Potebenko.

PERSPECTIVES

The Autonomous Republic of Crimea remains the "problem child" of Ukraine, a perennially sensitive area that frequently threatens to become engulfed in conflict. President Kuchma’s task is to ensure that his government has support from the local authorities and to avert an eventual takeover of power by the Communists under Hrach. At present, the chances of a crisis that would seriously undermine the stability of Ukraine seem remote. The precedent of presidential rule in 1995 remains an unspoken alternative if an impasse should arise. Moreover, the economic picture has steadily improved under the Kunitsyn administration and the dissatisfaction of the Crimean Tatars with their social and economic standing seems to have subsided. What occurred in May 2000 can be described as a "mini-crisis" that was resolved by the prompt actions of the Ukrainian president.

However, the withdrawal of the decision to remove the Crimean government signals the end only of this particular phase of the conflict. Kunitsyn’s position has been badly weakened by such an overwhelming vote against his government and President Kuchma must now decide whether to support his eventual replacement in Simferopol. In Crimean politics, life in office is short and both Premiers and parliamentary chairman have rarely served more than two years in office. In addition, there have been frequent challenges to Ukrainian authority from the peninsula, which, like the recent problems, reflect some of the weaknesses of the Ukrainian Constitution. It will not always be possible for Ukraine to resolve these dilemmas through negotiations. In the long term, the peninsula will either be granted more autonomy or the Kyiv government will likely amend the Constitution to give itself more authority over a recalcitrant region and specifically the president would then have the power to overrule decisions of the Crimean parliament.

There remain other imponderables, such as the attitude of Russian president Vladimir Putin to the parliamentary leadership of Hrach and the current separation of the city of Sevastopol from the administration of Crimea. Thus far, however, the latest political storm on the peninsula appears to have blown over.