ODESSA, Ukraine -- If the potent forces of frustrated nationalism, economic distress and political division continue unchecked in Ukraine, what happened here April 10 could someday be remembered as the Fort Sumter of the Black Sea War.
Late that day, Ukrainian airborne commandos stormed the small Russian-controlled navy base here, ousted Russian officers' families from their homes at gunpoint, ransacked their apartments and took control of the base. There were 226 commandos, against 18 naval officers and 56 sailors.
"Of course we didn't resist," Capt. Alexander Zelyenko, who was acting commander of the base, said later. "You can imagine what would have happened if there had been shooting."
If there had been shooting, the long-running dispute over how to divide the former Soviet Black Sea Fleet could have erupted into all-out fighting engulfing the whole of the heavily armed Black Sea coast, from Odessa to Crimea.
That it didn't happen is testimony to the good sense of some of those involved. That it could still happen, here or elsewhere, is a possibility that even Russian Defense Minister Pavel Grachev refuses to rule out.
It seems all too certain that the hotheads on both sides -- spurred on by ethnic tension in Crimea and bitter feelings over the role Russia may be playing in Ukraine's economic collapse -- are spoiling for a fight.
In Odessa, where the huge commercial port dwarfs the naval base, both sides have accused the other of intentionally provoking the incident. Several officers on both sides suggested that the whole incident was engineered by extremists who were trying to drive the countries apart.
Some suggest that the whole incident was little more than an exercise in political posturing. But, as Captain Zelyenko points out, posturing with loaded automatics in the dark of night is risky business at best.
The risk was not lost on the leaders of the two countries.
President Leonid M. Kravchuk of Ukraine and Boris N. Yeltsin of Russia quickly held a face-to-face meeting. They announced that they at last had reached an agreement on the division of the fleet, including the removal of the Ukrainian navy from the major installation at Sevastopol to some other port. The agreement fell apart less than a week later.
Mr. Kravchuk also promised that such an attack would not recur. Mr. Grachev said he couldn't be sure, considering the discipline of local Ukrainian units.
What he didn't say is that the Russians are not likely to be taken unawares a second time.
Since then, the Ukrainians have accused the Russians of attempting to smuggle 20 warplanes out of Crimea, a charge Mr. Grachev denied. The commander of the Black Sea Fleet said his wife received a death threat. And in Crimea the Russian nationalists who control the local government are pushing Ukraine ever further toward dissolution.
Trouble in Crimea
But if history someday records that the first bloodless skirmish was fought in Odessa, it is in Crimea that real trouble lies brewing.
This is a peninsula that is 70 percent Russian and that was a part of Russia for 160 years until, according to legend, Soviet leader Nikita S. Khrushchev decided one night in 1954, over a bottle of vodka, to transfer it to Ukraine.
Crimea is home to most of the Black Sea Fleet's 833 ships, as well as almost 25,000 officers and midshipmen. It is a strictly Russian-speaking part of Ukraine, and since January it has been led by Yuri Meshkov, chief of a political group called the Bloc of Russia.
Mr. Meshkov has talked at times about reintroducing the Russian ruble, insists that no Crimean tax money should flow to Kiev, and in March won a vaguely worded referendum in which residents endorsed "closer ties" with Russia.
He says he wants autonomy within Ukraine. His aides say the eventual goal is reunification with Russia.
The question took an incendiary turn Friday when the Crimean Parliament voted for a constitution claiming the right to confer Crimean citizenship, conduct a separate foreign policy and establish an army.
Ukraine and Russia quickly began sparring over the vote.
"I would like to warn those who are doing this of the inevitable harsh consequences," Mr. Kravchuk said.
"Crimea is a sovereign republic within Ukraine," Mr. Yeltsin countered, "and it has a right to its own political positions, the right to make its own decisions."
It has been a boisterous spring in Crimean politics.
Mr. Meshkov stunned officials in Kiev when he appointed his own minister of internal affairs -- that is, police chief and political enforcer -- for Crimea. President Kravchuk retaliated by appointing his own personal representative to the district. Mr. Meshkov dubbed him the "viceroy of the Crimea," and refused to have anything to do with him.
Mr. Kravchuk began sending a succession of Cabinet ministers to the Crimean capital of Simferopol to keep an eye on things. They have been met by a tent city of protesters at the government building, flying the St. Andrew's Cross flag of the Russian navy and prominently displaying signs that read, "Kravchuk -- enemy of Crimea."
The protest was organized by Mr. Meshkov's Bloc of Russia, which reportedly has ties to Alexander Rutskoi, the former Russian vice president who led the rebellion against Mr. Yeltsin in October.
"We're not fascists. We're not nationalists," said the demonstrators' leader, Alexander Kanafaev. "There are Russians here, Jews, Ukrainians. Just call us Crimean people."
Not seeking 'adventures'
Mr. Meshkov's chief aide, Vladimir Karpov, says Mr. Meshkov has no desire to "seek adventures" with Kiev. But Mr. Meshkov is an inexperienced and unpredictable politician. He has insisted that he be included in further talks on the Black Sea Fleet. And he appears to have Moscow almost as worried as Kiev.
FTC Simply put, Mr. Yeltsin can't afford to be accused of abandoning ethnic Russians, especially an increasingly bitter corps of officers who already are talking darkly about Moscow's "betrayal."
Recently the Russian government signed an economic accord with Mr. Meshkov, which Moscow may see as a way of trying to keep him in line.
In Kiev, the problems seem a lot less subtle. Even as Mr. Kravchuk is trying to deal with his Crimean headache, he is also contending with the larger catastrophe. Economic life throughout most of Ukraine is skidding to a halt, and the currency, the karbovanets, is almost worthless.
Mr. Kravchuk, who is hardly an ideologue, began hinting that Ukraine might need to re-adopt the Russian ruble, and although that led Mr. Meshkov to moderate his demands for a while, some Ukrainian officers believe it also set the stage for Odessa. Ukrainian nationalists, in their view, most likely forced the incident in order to stave off a rapprochement with Moscow.
Ukrainian political instability has reached the point that Mr. Kravchuk questioned earlier this month if the country could hold itself together. He asked Parliament to postpone the June 26 presidential elections because of the danger of a violent internal rupture -- a request that the Parliament has yet to act upon.
Intertwined interests
But Ukrainian and Russian interests are so intertwined here that the potential for a disaster embracing both countries is enormous.
The Russian and Ukrainian armies are the first and second largest in Europe. Under pressure from his nationalists, Mr. Kravchuk has doubled the number of soldiers stationed in Crimea in the past six months.
Mr. Yeltsin, under pressure from his own nationalists, has been unable to find a compromise over the fleet.
Russia and Ukraine are slipping, however unwillingly, toward an open break, toward a true post-Soviet nightmare. The crux is the Black Sea Fleet, a large and showy force that strategically is nearly irrelevant, because NATO-member Turkey controls access to the Black Sea.
In fact neither Moscow nor Kiev has any practical need for such a large force -- or the ability to pay for it. But the fleet has become an emotional emblem of national respect, and thus the two sides stumble on toward each other.
Near the fleet headquarters in Sevastopol is a small village, Balaklava, where in 1854, some 670 British cavalrymen of the Light Brigade charged disastrously into a Russian trap, betrayed by the folly and stupidity of their officers.
Marked as it was by suffering and incompetence, the Crimean War was one that neither side really wanted -- or could figure out how to stop, once it started. Russian and Ukrainians can only hope that history doesn't repeat itself.