Black Sea Fleet port in a storm

Ukrainian nationalists want to say goodbye to Russian ships of the Black Sea Fleet based in Sevastopol. Pictures / Reuters

Atop one of the highest points in the Black Sea port city of Sevastopol, the white, blue and red Russian flag ripples gently in the Crimean wind.

Far below, the pride of Russia's Black Sea Fleet bobs up and down in one of the world's most serendipitous natural harbours.

Welders cling like barnacles to the side of a ship being repaired in a cavernous dry dock, young sailors smoke on the prows of ships bristling with rockets, and in the distance one of the fleet's most precious assets, the missile cruiser Moskva, treads water on the grey January waves.

It is a scene that has remained broadly unchanged for more than 200 years since Sevastopol became the home of the Russian fleet in this strategically vital region, giving Moscow's ships access to the Mediterranean and a warm-water port that never freezes over.

But though Sevastopol in 2006 looks every inch a Russian naval town, complete with radar stations and pimply, greatcoat-clad Russian sailors, technically it isn't.

In fact, it's not even in Russia but in Ukraine, and if powerful members of the Ukrainian establishment get their way the Russian tricolour will soon be run down the flag pole for the last time and replaced with the blue and yellow Ukrainian flag.

Indeed, the Ukrainian Navy already has its own headquarters there. Sevastopol, one of Russia's most famous naval bases, is under threat and the first salvos in the battle to wrest control from Moscow have already been fired.

More than 30 Russian ships are moored here for the time being and an estimated 14,000 sailors stationed here, but the question is: for how much longer?

The city's ambiguous identity is a quirk of history. The collapse of the USSR in 1991 left the Soviet Black Sea Fleet, which was largely inherited by Russia, stranded in a newly independent Ukraine.

That did not pose a problem while the two countries were getting along and Ukraine was ruled by a Moscow-friendly government. But the situation is very different today.

Relations between the two have deteriorated sharply since Ukraine's pro-Western Orange Revolution in 2004.

Since Viktor Yushchenko's assumption of the Ukrainian presidency, Kiev has tried to distance itself from its former imperial master and embrace the West instead.

Latterly, Moscow's dispute with Kiev over gas, a row that saw Russia turn off the tap for a while, stoked anti-Russian feeling, particularly in western Ukraine, where people feel more affinity with the EU than Moscow.

And the fact that Mr Yushchenko's Government is making overtures towards Nato further complicates the Sevastopol situation. Russia's continued presence is not seen as compatible with Ukraine's membership of a United States-led military alliance.

Pressure on Moscow to get out of Sevastopol has been mounting since Mr Yushchenko came to power, but during the gas crisis that pressure hit gas mark eight.

At the apex of diplomatic hostilities, senior Ukrainian Government members reopened the Sevastopol question.

It was time to review Russia's 20-year lease of the port which expires in 2017, they argued, with a view to raising the rent from the current $98 million a year, possibly by a factor of four.

Ukraine made known that it also wanted to raise the price Russia pays for leasing radar stations in the area, and there was even loose talk of giving the Americans access to those same facilities.

To increase Moscow's discomfort, an overtly hostile inventory of the facilities used by the Black Sea Fleet is underway and Kiev has already accused Russia of illegally occupying some facilities and of illegally sub-letting others to private businesses.

Kiev's message is clear: Russia is no longer wanted in Sevastopol.

Foreign Minister Boris Tarasyuk has said as much in the media.

"Tell me, why on earth are there other states' prosecutors offices and courts acting on the territory of our state? Why are there Russian flags waving everywhere?" he fumed.

"Why are there Russian patrols with personal authorised arms blocking whole streets, walking about the city? It's abnormal."

Moscow's response to such talk has something of the Cold War about it. Sergei Ivanov, Defence Minister and one of the powerful Kremlin officials tipped to succeed Vladimir Putin as President, said any revision of the 1997 treaty concerning Sevastopol would be illegal, impossible and "fatal".

In comments that prompted media in both countries to refer to the row as a "New Crimean war", Mr Ivanov hinted that such a move would give Moscow carte blanche to review Ukraine's modern-day borders.

Sevastopol (formerly Sebastopol) is best-known in much of the world for the 1854-56 Crimean War, the Charge of the Light Brigade and Florence Nightingale.

But for Russians, Sevastopol occupies emotional territory, having been originally purloined for them by Catherine the Great in the 18th century.

Russian defenders held out against the English and French for 349 days during the Crimean War, and during World War II resisted the Germans and Romanians for 250 days, a feat that saw Sevastopol named a Russian "hero city".

"Sevastopol, Sevastopol, beloved of Russian sailors" runs an old song and during the Soviet era the area was deemed so militarily important to Moscow that it was closed to the public and foreigners, a state of affairs that did not change until 1996.

Russians are also convinced that Moscow was diddled out of Sevastopol and indeed the entire Crimea.

In 1954, the Crimea was "gifted" to the then Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic by the Russian Soviet Socialist Republic with the blessing of Communist leader Nikita Khrushchev.

The ostensible occasion was the 300th anniversary of Russia's co-operation with Ukrainian Cossacks and nobody really batted an eyelid since the USSR was regarded as eternal and one big happy family. Half a century later, feelings are very different and Moscow's powerful modern-day mayor, Yuri Luzhkov, has suggested Khrushchev made the decision after a drinking binge.

Russian nationalists want the return of Sevastopol and the Crimea, a favourite holiday destination for Russians, but Ukrainian nationalists want the Russians out and the area "de-Russified".

Modern-day Sevastopol, a city of almost 400,000 people, feels deeply Russian, however, and even local Ukrainians talk of it as being part of Russia, not Ukraine.

Three-quarters of its inhabitants are classified as Russian and an even higher proportion speak Russian as their first language and have a rudimentary or no grasp of Ukrainian.

Nor are the leaders of the Orange revolution popular in these parts. During the election that swept Mr Yushchenko to power, he and his supporters won just 7 per cent of the vote in Sevastopol.

Most people gave their vote to Viktor Yanukovych, Mr Yushchenko's pro-Russian rival and the man who lost the election after his supporters were found guilty of vote-rigging.

Many of Sevastopol's residents are former sailors, steeped in the city's unique history.

Leonid, a pensioner whose right hand is tattooed with a large anchor, served in the Soviet Navy for all his working life and though he is Ukrainian, seems ardently pro-Russian.

"This is Russian soil," he says. "Russians fought for this place."

Like many in Sevastopol, he is fiercely anti-Nato.

When German and American warships visited last year, locals gathered on the quayside to protest.

In the Sevastopol offices of the Progressive Socialist Party, an offshoot of the Communist Party, a poster urges voters not to let Ukraine become a "US colony". The message is stark.

A large hand with Nato tattooed on its knuckles and a swastika on its fist is pictured protruding from a shirt patterned with the US flag as it possessively claws at a map of Ukraine with blood dripping from scary-looking fingernails.

Mikhail Pushia, 35, a party activist, says Ukrainian Nato membership would be a terrible mistake.

"Yushchenko wants to join Nato so that he can get his hands on credit from the West. But that money will disappear into his own personal bank accounts."

Like almost everyone else who lives in Sevastopol, there is no doubt in Mr Pushia's mind that the city is Russian.

"If they held a referendum today, Crimea would go straight back to Russia."

Alexander Chervinsky, 46, an activist for firebrand Julia Tymoshenko's Motherland Party, cuts a lonely figure as he campaigns in Sevastopol for parliamentary elections in March.

He knows that he and his party with their pro-Western views are unlikely to do well in this part of the country but firmly believes that Ukraine's future lies in the European Union, not with Russia.

"It's a battle of civilisations. Turning back towards Russia is a dead-end," he says. Though Mr Chervinsky may be in the minority in Sevastopol, it is a very different story in Kiev and Western Ukraine, where distrust of Russia and dislike of its continued presence on Ukraine soil is stronger.

Seated at his desk behind a Russian flag, Gennady Basov, 35, chairman of the Russian Bloc Movement in Sevastopol, complains bitterly about such anti-Russian sentiment.

He argues that the fleet helps to protect the area's Russian-speaking population from encroaching Ukrainian nationalism.

Gloomily, he talks of hundreds of Russian-language schools being shut since Mr Yushchenko came to power, and of Russian-language advertising being banned.

"The [Russian] fleet is a factor of stability and a bulwark against harsh Ukrainisation," says Mr Basov. "It gives people here a signal that their compatriots have not abandoned them to their fate."

The fleet also provides about 20,000 local jobs and a stable economy, he says.

Ukrainian nationalists see things rather differently. Such claims are vastly exaggerated, they argue. In recent months a nationalist organisation, the Student Brotherhood, has stormed lighthouses and picketed Black Sea Fleet facilities.

As Ukraine heads for crunch parliamentary elections, the Sevastopol issue is bound to come to the fore again.

Russia has already started to fight back.

Extra funds have been promised to towns that host fleet facilities, Russian nationalists have promised to raise the matter in the Russian parliament and senior Kremlin officials have flown into the region to rally pro-Russian forces. Meanwhile, construction work at Novorossisk in Russia proper, a possible alternative site for the Black Sea Fleet, continues apace.

Relocating is a last resort, however, for at a time when Russia is trying to recapture some of its Soviet-era greatness, giving up Sevastopol is just not an option.

- INDEPENDENT