Putin dismisses attack as a ‘border incident’
Russian leader says clash part of pre-election ploy by Ukrainian president
MOSCOW— Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday dismissed the maritime clash between Russia and Ukraine as a criminal incident rather than the opening of a new front in the long-running conflict between the two countries, while a Russian court on the disputed Crimean peninsula sent a second group of captured Ukrainian sailors to jail.
“This is a border incident, nothing more,” Putin told an international business forum in Moscow when he was asked about the confrontation on Sunday when Russian ships fired on and seized three Ukrainian naval vessels in disputed coastal waters. It was his first public comment on the subject.
In Ukraine, President Petro Poroshenko enacted martial law for 30 days in 10 regions, mainly those bordering areas with a Russian military presence.
Poroshenko has said that the sweeping provisions of martial law — which include the suppression of civil liberties — would only be invoked in the case of a Russian invasion.
“We need to rebuff the aggressor at any moment,” Poroshenko told troops at a Ukrainian training centre, according to a statement on his website.
Putin reiterated the Kremlin’s accusation that Poroshenko manufactured the entire incident in order to put Ukraine on a war footing and thereby enhance his flagging support before a March presidential election that he was sure to lose.
“A small incident in the Black Sea and martial law was introduced,” Putin said. “It’s a game to exacerbate tensions. It’s dirty play within the country in order to crush their political opponents.”
Still, Russia moved to enhance its own, already robust military posture in the region by deploying an additional air defence missile system to the Crimean peninsula.
Russia added one S-400 antiaircraft missile system to the three already there, the Interfax news agency quoted Col. Vadim Astafyev, the top Defence Ministry official in southern Russia, as saying.
In Ukraine, very little changed on the ground. But Andriy Demchenko, a spokesperson for the State Border Guard Service, said that it had stepped up its controls of who is allowed to enter the country and barred 150 people, including 80 Russians, in the past 24 hours.
Ukraine has gathered broad western support for its position over the disputed passage by three small naval craft through the Kerch Strait into the Sea of Azov, which the two sides agreed to treat as joint territorial waters in a 2003 treaty. Russian border forces rammed a Ukrainian naval tug and opened fire with shells big enough to leave a gaping hole near the pilot house of one small Ukrainian artillery craft.
The Russians captured the three boats with 24 crewmen, wounding three of them.
U.S. President Donald Trump has said he might cancel a planned meeting with Putin at the Group of 20 summit in Buenos Aires on Saturday over the clash. Yuri Ushakov, Putin’s foreign policy adviser, said Wednesday the Kremlin believed the meeting was still scheduled and had not received any indication otherwise.
“This meeting is necessary for both sides,” Ushakov told reporters. “It’s important in view of the developing situation in the world.”
The Ukrainian sailors have been charged with crossing the Russian border illegally and sent to jail for two months of pretrial detention. Fifteen were charged on Tuesday, including those wounded in the incident, and nine were charged in court appearances on Wednesday.
Russia highlighted the fact that two of the Ukrainians were intelligence officers, suggesting this proved the confrontation had been planned. Ukraine criticized Russia for treating the captives as common criminals rather than prisoners of war, including broadcasting some videos of what seemed to be forced confessions.
In court on Wednesday, Oleh Melnychuk, the captain of the tugboat, objected to being characterized as a criminal and rejected Russian statements that the Ukrainian vessels had been manoeuvring suspiciously.