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Russia, Ukraine are all at sea over seized ships
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Kiev and Moscow were facing their worst crisis in years yesterday as Ukraine and its Western allies demanded the release of three ships fired on and seized by Russia near Crimea.
Russian vessels boarded and captured the ships on Sunday, accusing them of illegally entering Russian waters off the coast of Crimea in the Sea of Azov.
Ukraine’s military was on high alert and parliament was to vote on a request from President Petro Poroshenko to impose martial law for 60 days.
The incident has raised fears of a wider military escalation and the UN Security Council was to hold an emergency session yesterday. NATO also called an emergency meeting on the incident.
“These were planned acts of aggression by the Russian Federation against Ukraine,” Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin said in Kiev. “We will demand (at the Security Council) the immediate release of our sailors and the liberation of our ships.”
He said talks were under way, with the European Union and others, on increasing sanctions imposed on Russia.
But Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov accused Kiev of a planned provocation and of using “dangerous methods” that put ships in the area at risk.
The crisis unfolded as two small Ukrainian warships and a tugboat were heading through the Kerch Strait, a waterway that gives access to the Sea of Azov from the Black Sea and which is used by both Ukraine and Russia.
Ukraine said a Russian border guard vessel rammed the tugboat and then fired on the ships, immobilizing all three.
Russia’s FSB security service, which oversees border forces, confirmed weapons had been fired and the vessels seized, accusing the Ukrainian ships of “violating the Russian border.”
The confrontation is a dangerous development in the long-running conflict pitting Ukraine against Moscow and Russian-backed rebels in the east of the country. More than 10,000 people have died in the fighting.
Tensions have been building over the Kerch Strait, where Russia has built a new bridge that gives it a land connection to Crimea, annexed by Moscow in 2014.
Kiev has accused Moscow of blocking access for Ukrainian ships though the strait, the only way in and out of the Sea of Azov to the Black Sea.
In recent months both sides had deployed more naval and border vessels to the area.
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