Ukraine warns Russia over naval base agreement

KIEV, January 19 (RIA Novosti) - Ukraine urged Russia Thursday not to move military hardware from its Ukrainian naval base without consulting the country's authorities, in another sign that Kiev is increasingly reluctant to allow its neighbor access to its Black Sea coast.

Answering a question about Russia's relocation of heavy military equipment from the Crimean base of Sevastopol to Cape Sarych in the south of Crimea, Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesman Vasyl Filipchuk said redeployment was "possible only after coordination with Ukraine's authorities."

The issue, however, was not a reason to escalate any further the tensions between the two countries, Filipchuk said.

Filipchuk said the unilateral relocation of Russia's military hardware over Ukraine would be a "clear infringement of the existing bilateral agreement on the status of Russia's Black Sea Fleet in Ukraine," but added: "We do not want any escalation in our [Russian-Ukrainian] relations."

The spokesman said he believed that the tensions that have built up between Moscow and Kiev this month would be resolved during a meeting of a working group on the Black Sea Fleet within a commission set up by the two countries' presidents, due in February.

Although Russia and Ukraine have an agreement under which Russia will lease the base of Sevastopol in the Crimea until 2017, some Ukrainian politicians called for a revision of the contract terms after Russian energy giant Gazprom announced that it wanted to raise prices for supplies of natural gas to Ukraine to international market levels.

Last week Ukrainian officials seized a lighthouse in the Crimea, which Russia said belonged to its Black Sea Fleet's hydrographic service. The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry claimed all hydrographic facilities on the country's Crimea coast belonged to Ukraine.

And earlier this week the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry condemned as illegal Russia's dredging of the seabed in the Kerch Strait, the Soviet-era border between the two countries.

Ukraine's recent moves have recalled tensions that developed between the two countries in 2003, when Russia's attempt to construct a dam at Tuzla Island in the Kerch Strait provoked a bitter three-month dispute with its neighbor.