Sailors’ confessions forced, Kyiv says

• Ukrainian sailors were filmed Tuesday giving what Kyiv said were forced confessions and brought to court after Russia seized their ships off the coast of Crimea in a major escalation of tensions.

A court in Crimea ruled that 12 of the 24 sailors and security service agents who were captured would be kept in confinement for two months, with a decision on the rest expected Wednesday.

Moscow has defied Western calls to release the men, who have been accused of violating Russia’s borders and face up to six years in prison. At least three of the men are in hospital.

State television has broadcast footage from the interrogation of three of the captives, including an officer who, while reading from a screen, said the ships had deliberately ignored Russian requests to stop.

The head of the Ukrainian navy said the sailors had been forced to give false testimony, noting that several of the men had relatives in Crimea.

Russian ships rammed a tugboat and opened fire on two gunboats that were trying to reach the Ukrainian port of Mariupol through the Kerch Strait on Sunday.

The Ukrainian security service said Tuesday that a Russian jet had also fired rockets during the incident, seriously injuring one officer. Special forces later boarded the vessels.

Russia has claimed the incident was a planned “provocation,” while Ukraine has called it an act of aggression.

Ukraine’s parliament on Monday adopted a motion by President Petro Poroshenko to impose martial law for 30 days in parts of the country.

Although the Azov Sea is, by a 2003 treaty, supposed to be shared between Ukraine and Russia, the Kerch Strait connecting it to the Black Sea has been controlled by Moscow since it annexed Crimea in 2014.

Russia has been demanding that ships receive permission to pass after it opened a bridge over the strait in May.

In a phone call with Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, late on Monday, Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, accused Kyiv of “creating yet another conflict situation” before next March’s presidential election in Ukraine, according to a Kremlin statement.

Tuesday, Russian state media footage showed antiship missiles moving from Sevastopol to the Kerch Strait.

For more than four years, Russia has backed separatists in a conflict in eastern Ukraine that has killed more than 10,000 people.

Tensions have also been rising in the Azov Sea as both sides have detained each other’s fishing vessels. But Sunday’s incident marked the first time Russia has openly attacked Ukrainian forces.

The U.K. has condemned Russia’s “destabilizing behaviour in the region and its ongoing violation of Ukrainian territorial integrity.”