How to avoid a second Crimean war

In the Panorama Museum in Sevastopol last week I gazed at one of the world's most incredible paintings, The Defence of Sevastopol by Franz Roubaud. The 360-degree, 14 metres high, 2,000 square metre masterpiece, depicts in great detail one day's fighting during the siege of the city during the Crimean War.

That bloody conflict was brought about by Western attempts to push the Russian Fleet out of the Black Sea. Today, 154 years after the start of the first Crimean War, could history be about to repeat itself?

The prospect of a new conflict on this Black Sea peninsula seemed unreal on a beautiful late summer's afternoon. In Sevastopol's pretty seaside park, close by the port which is still home to Russia's Black Sea fleet, young and old appeared not to have a care in the world. Yet tensions in the region are rising.

When Kruschev gave the Crimean

peninsular to Ukraine in 1954 it was a pretty meaningless gesture given that Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union and under the Kremlin's control. But the majority of the two million people who live on the peninsula are ethnic Russians who were and remain loyal to Moscow, ­ unlike the majority of Ukrainians who were delighted to split from Russia in 1991 when the country became independent. I lose count of the number of Russian flags I saw flying in the streets of Sevastopol. By contrast, the yellow and blue national colours of Ukraine were nowhere to be seen.

Ukraine has been in political paralysis for the past month since the 'Our Ukraine' party of the country's pro-western president Viktor Yushchenko pulled out of the ruling coalition after the bloc led by Yushchenko's bitter rival, the photogenic prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko, sided with the opposition pro-Moscow faction.

This week Yuschenko dissolved parliament and called a general election for December 7. The stakes for the future of the Crimea could not be higher.

What is fuelling anti-Ukrainian and