When U.S. Marine reservists disembarked in this former Soviet republic, they expected a quick and simple mission: installing new showers and toilets at a military training facility, then leaving.
The 200 Americans did not anticipate the anti-NATO blockades and protesters shouting "Occupiers go home!" that greeted them upon arrival in Ukraine.
The angry welcome in the Crimean port of Feodosiya - led by a radical pro- Russian party and the Communists - was widely seen as the opening volley in the battle over Ukraine's campaign to join NATO, an issue now forced to the top of the nation's political agenda.
Analysts say that President Viktor Yushchenko's opponents - and Moscow - have sensed the government's weakness after its party's humiliating third- place showing in March parliamentary elections and drawn-out talks to put together a new government. They are seizing the chance to torpedo Kiev's hopes to receive a NATO invitation in 2008.
"The war for Ukraine has started," said Hrihoriy Perepelytsya, of the Foreign Policy Institute of the Foreign Ministry's Diplomatic Academy. "What is happening in Feodosiya is just a piece of a more powerful anti-NATO campaign."
He added: "Clearly, the goal is to discredit Ukraine as a potential NATO candidate."
Yushchenko has made NATO membership a priority since his 2004 presidential election campaign, and has been pushing in the coalition talks for potential partners to commit to that goal.
His supporters argue that if Ukraine does not join NATO, Kiev will inevitably slide back under Moscow's influence or risk being left in an unprotected no man's land between Russia and the West. NATO accession has also been billed as a first step toward the ultimate prize: EU membership, with its considerable economic advantages.
A key test is expected to come Wednesday, when the government tries to win parliamentary permission for foreign troops to be on Ukrainian territory as part of training exercises. A victory would allow the Marines, who are biding their time at a Defense Ministry resort, to go ahead with their three-week project to refurbish the Stary Krym facility, which is scheduled to be used in a mid-July training exercise involving U.S. and other NATO members.
A defeat - or a failure to even get Parliament to consider the measure - could force Ukraine to postpone or cancel its Sea Breeze exercise and five others, and possibly send the Americans it invited home again.
"We cannot speak about common European values without also talking about the concept of a common defense," Yushchenko said Tuesday.
NATO has said its door is open to this nation of 47 million and appears bewildered by the hostility; the military alliance had been warmly embraced by other former Communist countries in Eastern Europe.
Recent opinion polls have found that only about 20 percent of Ukrainians support NATO membership. Many Ukrainians perceive the alliance as a threat and are puzzled over why their country - which, unlike some of its former Soviet neighbors, has not been torn by separatist conflicts - would willingly join a military alliance that could drag its sons off to war.
Fears persist that giving NATO a foothold here would irreversibly sour relations with Russia and turn Ukraine into an American stooge. Critics also say it would be too expensive to maintain NATO military standards.
"We should be spending our money on improving our own military rather than in taking on any new international obligations," an anti-NATO politician, Nestor Shufrych, said on NTN television.
Ukraine, located on the Black Sea and bordering Russia, would certainly be a strategic prize for NATO. NATO members like the Baltic nations and Poland, who fear a resurgent Moscow, have been the strongest supporters of locking this nation into the Western camp.
NATO has set up 27 information stands across Ukraine, and invited lawmakers, religious leaders and cultural figures - even the 2004 Eurovision contest winner, Ruslana - to NATO headquarters in Brussels for get-acquainted sessions.
The Kremlin, meanwhile, has bristled at the prospect of its former Cold War foe arriving at its doorstep. The anti-NATO protests in Crimea have been given prominent coverage on Russian television, which is watched in many Ukrainian homes. Russian lawmakers have flown in to express their solidarity, with some of Russia's more extremist politicians even floating the idea of pressing for Crimea to be returned to Moscow's control.
The entire Crimean Peninsula, which has a large ethnic-Russian population, was declared a NATO-free zone by its Parliament on Tuesday, a move that Yushchenko criticized as meaningless.
"We don't have a single square mile that belongs to NATO," he said.
Crimea is home to Russia's Black Sea Fleet, based in the Ukrainian port of Sevastopol, about 160 kilometers, or 100 miles, away from where the Americans are waiting.
But NATO supporters note that Yushchenko has room to maneuver, particularly if he reaches out to the opposition Party of Regions, led by the pro-Moscow Viktor Yanukovich, which unlike other pro-Russian parties insists it is not hostile to NATO.
The Associated Press
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