From his giant monument overlooking Sevastopol, Vladimir Lenin gazes dreamily out towards the Black Sea.

In the harbour, elderly ladies in floral swimming costumes bob in the warm lilac water. Shimmering in the distance is the grey Russian battleship Moskva, framed by steep chalky-coloured mountains. The port of Sevastopol on Crimea’s rocky southern coast is the historic home of Russia’s Black Sea fleet. After the break-up of the Soviet Union, Ukraine allowed Russia to lease Sevastopol as a military base until 2017.

But after August’s war in Georgia, the peninsula is at the centre of growing speculation. The fear is that – like South Ossetia and Abkhazia, the breakaway regions of Georgia recognised by Moscow as independent – it could become the target of Russian ambitions.

Earlier this month Ukrainian officials accused Moscow of distributing passports to ethnic Russians in Crimea, who make up more than half of its two-million population. Kiev fears a row over the use of the base could be used to stir up separatist sentiments, with Crimea seceding from Ukraine in a referendum.

On the streets of Sevastopol, the mood is defiantly pro-Russian. It is also vehemently opposed to Ukraine’s President Viktor Yushchenko and his plans to join Nato. Last week, several hundred locals turned out to welcome the Moskva on its return from Georgia. They waved Russian flags and banners; one read: “We are proud of you.”

“The majority of the population here supports the presence of the Black Sea fleet,” said Anatoly Kalenko, chairman of Sevastopol’s veterans’ association, and a former nuclear submarine commander. According to Kalenko, locals would resist any attempt to turf out the Russian fleet, especially if Nato ships would occupy the base instead.

“We categorically don’t want other vessels here. Not the Americans, not the French and not the Turks,” he said. “Britain has a tradition of seafaring. We respect that; we remember Nelson. But frankly we don’t want you here either.’

His association did not believe in separatism, he explained, but was opposed to any attempt to remove the Soviet memorials that adorn the town’s hilly streets. Pinned to his wall was a map of the USSR; above the desk a portrait of Lenin. Popular feeling against Nato was running high, he said, since it was an “aggressive” military bloc.

Even before last month’s war, tensions were rising. In May – on the anniversary of Russia’s victory over Nazi Germany – Moscow’s mayor, Yuri Luzhkov, visited Sevastopol and said it “was, and should again be, a Russian city.” Ukraine’s furious government accused him of undermining its territorial integrity and banned him from returning.

There have been angry clashes in Sevastopol between Ukrainian nationalists and pro-Russian locals. In July, Ukraine’s defence minister unveiled a plaque to commemorate Ukraine’s brief declaration of independence in 1918. Someone removed it from the wharf, next to the statue of Russian war hero Admiral Nakhimov, and threw it into the sea.

Many of the peninsula’s politicians admit they would like Crimea to join the Russian Federation. “It’s a myth that Ukraine is not part of Russia. We don’t believe it,” Oleg Rodilov, a pro-Russian MP in Crimea’s autonomous parliament, based in the regional capital of Simferopol, said. It would be wrong to accuse him of “separatism”, he said.

“For you, Ukraine and Russia are a priori different states. For us they are a priori the same,” he said. The links of culture, language and Orthodox religion made Ukraine and Russia an indivisible entity, he said. Also, both countries were Slavic, he said. “We don’t believe there is any difference. We have been together for 350 years.”

Russian-speaking residents say the peninsula, a mass tourist destination in Soviet times, ended up in Ukraine by mistake. The Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev transferred Crimea to the Ukrainian Soviet Republic in 1954. Russia affirmed the modern borders of Ukraine in a 1997 friendship treaty. Last April, however, Vladimir Putin, Russia’s prime minister, contemptuously described Ukraine as “not even a real state”.

Nationalist Crimean MPs now liken Crimea to Kosovo – the former Serbian province largely recognised as independent by the west this year. According to Leonid Grach, a pro-Russian communist MP, Crimea will declare itself independent should Yushchenko press ahead with his plans for Ukraine to join Nato.

“If Yushchenko declares that Russia is the enemy, Crimea won’t accept it,” Grach said. “It means that Ukraine will break up. In Crimea there will be a war – maybe even a world war.” Ukraine should renounce Nato, agree a friendship and cooperation treaty with Russia, and prolong the lease for Russia’s Black Sea fleet, Grach said.

Nobody doubts that staging a coup in Sevastopol would be easy. The Russian flag already flies above many of the town’s elegant and classical Stalin-era buildings belonging to the Black Sea fleet. Locals would merely need to tie up a few Ukrainian officials. Ukraine’s government would be reluctant to reclaim the town by force, fearful of provoking an all-out military conflict with Russia.

“I wouldn’t be too sad if Ukraine breaks apart. Everything would be in its right place again,” Raisa Teliatnikova said. Teliatnikova is head of Sevastopol’s Russian Community – one of several non-governmental organisations that promote Russian culture and language, and, its critics say, the views of Moscow.

Teliatnikova rejects the suggestion that her organisation is a Kremlin front. “This is our land. My father and uncle fought for this territory during the Great Patriotic War [World War II]. Why should we leave?” she said. “Nobody asked us whether we wanted to live in Ukraine. None of us are intending to go anywhere.”

There is no clear evidence to suggest that Russia has, as Kiev suggests, been doling out passports to ethnic Russians living in Crimea. But Moscow has been stepping up its influence: the flag of the pro-Kremlin United Russia party sits in Raisa’s office, situated above a dancing club and next to an acting school. Earlier this summer the party agreed to finance the Russian community’s newspaper – a small but insidious step.

Russian officials insisted on Monday that the number of Crimeans applying for Russian passports was “pretty much the same”. Vladimir Lysenko, of Russia’s consulate in Simferopol, said about 13,000 Russians lived and worked in the port. “Russia doesn’t lay any claims on Sevastopol. We don’t understand declarations from western politicians who say Ukraine ‘will be next’.”

Optimists believe talk of Russia wresting back Crimea from Ukraine is simply overblown. Crimea’s third ethnic group – the Tartars, descended from the peninsula’s Turkic inhabitants – are strongly pro-Ukrainian. Mustafa Djemilev, a pro-Yushchenko MP, believes Russia would not attempt a Georgian-style invasion in Crimea.

“The idea is nonsense. Ukraine is not Georgia or Chechnya – Ukraine is much more powerful,” he said.—Dawn/Guardian News Service