Ukraine's parliament ratified a deal to extend the lease on Russia's naval base Tuesday in a riotous session where the opponents of the measure engaged in fistfights, hurled smoke bombs and tossed eggs at the speaker.
While hailed by President Dmitry Medvedev and his Ukrainian counterpart Viktor Yanukovych, the deal was described as a “dark page in Ukraine's history” by Ukraine's chief opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko, who called for early elections to the legislature.
Defending friendlier ties with Russia, Yanukovych didn't rule out recognizing Georgia's two breakaway regions as independent states — which could further pull him into Russia's embrace — in a Tuesday appearance at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, or PACE.
On the same occasion, Yanukovych turned down Russia's proposal to join the customs union that it formed with Kazakhstan and Belarus, attributing the refusal to Ukraine's membership in the World Trade Organization, a global fair-trade arbiter.
In Kiev, pro-Yanukovych deputies earlier that day mustered enough votes to give the green light to a deal that will extend the Russian Black Sea Fleet's stay at the port of Sevastopol by 25 years, through 2042, in exchange for a $40 billion discount on natural gas imports. As a precaution to secure order, the majority had canceled debate and blocked access to the platform and the podium, but this did not stop protests from the opposition, who began to brawl and bombard the area with smoke bombs and eggs.
In a smoke-filled assembly hall that resembled a battlefield, two chamber guards, clad in black, rushed to shield Speaker Volodymyr Lytvyn from the egg deluge with two open black umbrellas. Footage from the scene showed an egg landing on the head of one of the guards. Anti-Yanukovych deputies also spread a giant yellow-blue national flag across the hall in an effort to thwart the 236 votes cast in favor of the deal in the 450-seat parliament.
The Russian side was considerably less fractious in considering the deal Tuesday. Gathered for a special session in Moscow, most of State Duma's 450 deputies applauded on receiving news of the ratification in Kiev before giving their own overwhelming blessing of 410 votes. The Federation Council is scheduled to consider the agreement Wednesday.
Following the dramatic standoff in Kiev, opposition deputies walked out of the parliament to a crowd of supporters outside — who had attempted to break in through police cordons — to make speeches. Proponents of the agreement also rallied nearby. The two groups numbered some 10,000 people in total.
Tymoshenko urged supporters to turn up near the parliament building before the next session, scheduled for May 11, and block out the “traitors” and thus prevent the chamber from operating until they agree to abrogate their vote or call an early election.
“The Ukrainian parliament is a gathering of people whose majority hate Ukraine, don't accept Ukrainian values and downright fight against Ukraine,” she told reporters shortly before.
Ukraine's Prime Minister Mykola Azarov said on television that the government would respond with force to any violence.
In a separate statement earlier that day, Tymoshenko rejected Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's recent assertion that she had agreed to consider granting Russia a lease extension for the naval base if the price were right.
Viktor Yushchenko, ousted as president in elections earlier this year, said permission for Russia's Black Sea Fleet to stay longer equalled “military usurpation.”
Another opposition leader, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, warned that the opposition would reverse the deal if and when it came to dominate the political landscape.
“There's no such thing as eternal politicians and eternal agreements,” he said in a statement.
Yanukovych, speaking at a PACE session Tuesday, again brushed off accusations that his decision to let the Russian navy stay longer contradicts Ukraine's constitution. He said he had to reduce the gas price that Tymoshenko negotiated as the previous prime minister, describing it as unfairly high.
Most Ukrainian members of the pan-European legislature left the session hall in protest of the deal after Yanukovych took the floor.
Yanukovych didn't answer negatively when a PACE member asked whether Ukraine would recognize South Ossetia and Abkhazia, the regions Russia recognized as sovereign states after a brief war with Georgia in 2008.
“We are categorically against applying double standards in this matter,” he said, adding that the global community needed to hammer out clear rules to deal with nations seeking independence.
In recognizing the two breakaway regions, Russia said any criticism of the decision from the West would represent double standards because the West had backed Kosovo's secession from Serbia.
Medvedev, on a visit to Norway, said the vote in Kiev was the best policy for Ukraine.
“I am very happy about that,” he told reporters in Oslo. “It shows that reason triumphed and Ukraine's strategic interests prevailed over fleeting emotions.”
Putin paid a whirlwind visit to Kiev overnight before the vote, announcing that he made “extensive” proposals to Ukraine to cooperate in nuclear power energy, which could involve upgrading Ukraine's reactors. Shipbuilding and aircraft construction are the other areas for joint efforts, he said after talks with Azarov and Yanukovych, who remarked that the cooperation proposals were “interesting.”
The stopover on the way home from Italy was to prepare for a high-level bilateral meeting Friday, he said.
Putin reiterated his assessment of the gas bill discount, which Russia agreed to give as part of future, increased payments for the naval base, as “exorbitant.”
“I could eat Yanukovych and your prime minister together for that money,” Putin told a Ukrainian reporter, imagining that such a sum could even persuade him to resort to cannibalism. “But there's no military base in the world that costs this much money.”
Medvedev, speaking in Oslo, picked the word “exorbitant” as well when he mentioned the deal, but he said the price was not so high.
“The payment for the presence of our navy is large, but it's not exorbitant,” he said. “It's not exorbitant because we have a strategic relationship with Ukraine.”