Tuzla Island

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Tuzla (Ukrainian and Russian Тузла; Crimean Tatar Tuzla ) is the name of about 200 to 500 m wide and 6 km long island in the Kerch Strait, between the Crimean peninsula and the Russian Taman peninsula. The state affiliation of the island is disputed between Russia and Ukraine.

On the island live about 20 families who live from fishing and some rest homes Ukrainian enterprises are to be found there a small post of the Ukrainian border troops and a few cottages.

The island separated only in the 1920s by erosion of the Taman peninsula from whose extremity it was until then. 1941 was the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR, the administration of the island from the Krasnodar region of the Russian Crimea at that time also. In 1954 the Crimea from Russia was handed over to the Ukraine, the island of Tuzla but more or less overlooked because it was a closed military zone at this time and was therefore managed directly by the RSFSR. In 1973, the administrations of the Crimea and the Krasnodar region jointly decided that the island should be managed from the Crimea. An international agreement or other formal arrangement between Ukraine and Russia has not happened, however.

For Russia and the Ukraine, the island has great strategic value because it lies on the eastern Crimea opposite side of the strait. With control of the island Ukraine can thus control the sea fairway of the strait between Azov and the Black and charge fees on Russian ships. In addition, indirectly depends on the possession of the island from the Seegrenzziehung between the two countries. Since under the Kerch Strait larger reserves of natural gas are suspected, it also has economic significance.

The conflict over the island smouldered since the end of the USSR, but was acutely only in 2003, when Russia began to build against the declared will of the Ukrainian government a road embankment from their territory to the island. Ukraine thus strengthened their military border post and let deepen with a dredger, the strait between the island and the Russian mainland.

In December 2010, the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry announced the demarcation of the exact border line for the following year. A first of the Russian-Ukrainian demarcation Commission meeting took place in Moscow already on December 20, 2010. After long negotiations to July 12, 2012 at a meeting of the presidents of Ukraine and Russia in Yalta agreement signed, the island of Tuzla and the fairway of the strait between the Black Sea and Azov remain after the under Ukrainian jurisdiction, but the waterway managed jointly should be. The exact course of the maritime boundary is determined so that the two countries sharing the presumed natural resources is possible.