Given the pull-out starts today, it may take well into 2020, he estimated, saying it will take many trains to evacuate all the land-based equipment.

He proposed drawing up a plan for the Russian withdrawal, get it approved by Verkhovna Rada and forward it to the Russian Federation. “We have enough experts to cope with the task. Russians are our brothers, but we all have separate homes where we live,” the ex-commander said.

With 3 Russian naval vessels to 1 Ukrainian in Sevastopol, Ukraine leaders, the president, premier and speaker, should go to Brussels ASAP to request entry in NATO. Only NATO can become a stabilizing factor in Crimea, Kozhyn added.

In addition to getting a NATO umbrella, Ukrainian authorities must deploy new contingents of police and security service personnel on the peninsula. “Sevastopol today is controlled by a powerful military-political clan with worked-out strategies to protect the Russian interests for the next 10-15 years. Unfortunately, Ukraine has shown no political will to handle the situation,” the ex-admiral stated.

In Borys Kozhyn’s opinion, the anti-Ukrainian feelings in Crimea are fueled by the Russian Bloc, Russian Community of Sevastopol, Progressive Socialists and the Party of regions. “I came specifically to Lviv to send my message about Sevastopol from here,” he stressed.

The Ukrainian leadership does nothing to deal with the situation in Sevastopol, where interethnic hatred is being fanned. It poses a direct threat to Ukraine’s security, he continued. “Nowhere in Crimea I had a feeling I am in Ukraine,” he confessed.

The only way-out, Kozhyn opines, is to hold an emergency session of the National Defense and Security Council in Crimea and rotate police and SBU units, say, from Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk and Ternopil oblasts to Crimea.

At present, Russia pays a token fee for leasing 20,000 hectares of land in Sevastopol. Meanwhile, it has to pay at least $10 m for every hectare a year, Borys Kozhyn said.