The recent dispute over the tiny Tuzla Island in the Kerch Strait, the entrance to the Azov Sea, should not be happening

The Ukrainian-Russian "strategic partnership" -- which was devoid of real content during Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma's first term in office and under Russian President Boris Yeltsin -- was beginning to be finally filled with some substance during Kuchma's second term and under Russian President Vladimir Putin. As the Kuchmagate crisis unfolded after November 2000 and the reformist government of Prime Minister Viktor Yushchenko was removed in April 2001, Ukraine's multivector foreign policy reoriented toward Russia and the CIS. For Moscow, the crowning achievements of this reorientation came this year. 2002 was designated "the Year of Russia in Ukraine," and in January 2003 Kuchma became the first non-Russian CIS leader to be elected head of the CIS Council of Heads of State. On 17 September, Ukraine, Russia, Kazakhstan, and Belarus signed the CIS Single Economic Space (EEP), only 12 days prior to the beginning of the territorial conflict over Tuzla. Ukraine's reorientation toward Russia and the CIS seemed set to continue. Kuchma desperately needs Putin's support in the October 2004 presidential election in order to ensure a suitable successor -- if indeed a suitable one can be found -- is elected. One way to achieve this was to again play the Russian card in eastern Ukraine, a tactic Kuchma successfully used in the 1994 presidential election. This can now be ruled out. Pro-Kuchma Crimean Prime Minister Serhiy Kunitsyn lamented this week that "I don't know whose idea it was to build the dam, but I do know that it is ruining everything achieved during the Year of Russia in Ukraine." As the crisis escalated, calls from within Ukraine's elites to speed up steps to join NATO, an objective first outlined in a presidential decree in July 2002, became more frequent. Our Ukraine Deputy Yuriy Yekhanurov, head of the Verkhovna Rada's Industrial Policy and Enterprise Committee, told parliament on 22 October that Ukraine should rebuild a small nuclear deterrent as the only way to deter similar threats to Ukraine's territorial integrity. In a secret presidential decree dated 21 October, Kuchma outlined steps to be taken to defend Ukraine's territorial integrity. Those steps included Ukraine quitting the recently agreed EEP if Russia attempts to encroach on its territory. Other nonmilitary steps include appealing to the declared nuclear powers, who provided "security assurances" in return for Ukraine's nuclear disarmament in 1994-96, the UN Security Council, NATO, and the OSCE. A further step outlined in the decree was for the Foreign Ministry unilaterally to declare the Kerch Strait and the Azov Sea internal Ukrainian waters.