KIEV, July 24 – Russia’s Black Sea Fleet will have to leave its Ukrainian bases in Crimea after a 20-year rental agreement expires in 2017, a top Ukrainian negotiator on the issue said Tuesday.

Volodymyr Ohryzko, deputy foreign minister who is in charge of holding the talks on the BSF, reacted to comments from a former Russian top navy commander suggesting the fleet should stay in Crimea indefinitely.

“The BSF will have to leave the territory of Ukraine in May 2017,” Ohryzko said at a press conference.

The reaction comes a day after Igor Kasatonov, a former first deputy commander of Russia’s naval forces and a former BSF top commander, said the BSF will stay in Sevastopol “for as long as Russia needs this.”

After the breakup of the former Soviet Union in 1991, Ukraine and Russia have long argued over jurisdiction of the BSF, the No. 4 biggest naval fleet in the USSR.

In an agreement signed in 1996, Russia received most of the naval ships, while Ukraine has agreed to rent its Sevasopol bases to Russia for 20 years.

Russia agreed to pay about $100 million a year, but the payments do not actually change hands as Russia has been offsetting them against Ukraine’s natural gas debt that had been incurred in 1991-1992.

Tensions between Ukraine and Russia over the BSF rose in early 2005 when Kiev had first suggested that Moscow should increase the rent payments. Ukrainian officials have mentioned different figures, ranging from $500 million to $1.4 billion, to charge Russia for the stationing.

But Russia has vigorously defended the agreement signed in 1996 and any changes to the agreement would provoke serious confrontation with Moscow.

President Viktor Yushchenko said two weeks ago that Ukraine will press for an increase in the rent it charges Russia after revising up some of the costs.

Yushchenko is expected to discuss the issue with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin between Aug. 15 and Aug. 20 at Putin’s summer residence in Sochi.

Russia seeks to leave the rent payments unchanged, but it also seeks to keep the BSF in Sevastopol beyond 2017 as a measure of influence on Ukraine and other Black Sea nations.

Also, Russia would have to spend $10 billion to build its own naval base in Novorossiisk, a huge spending it could avoid if its BSF continues to stay in Ukraine, analysts said.

The BSF has 15,000 servicemen that operate a total of 46 ships and submarines, according to Russian naval officials. The fleet’s ships and submarines are capable of simultaneously launching more than 100 missiles and more than 60 torpedoes, and dropping 500 naval mines, according to the officials. (tl/ez)