Tensions up as Russia seizes Ukrainian ships
MOSCOW: Ukraine’s president demanded on Monday that Russia immediately release Ukrainian sailors and vessels seized in a standoff around Crimea that sharply escalated tensions between the two countries and drew international concern.
The two neighbours have been locked in a tense tug-of-war since Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea. But the incident on Sunday, in which Russian coast guard ships fired on Ukrainian navy vessels near the Kerch Strait, directly pitted the two militaries against each other, placing them on the verge of an open conflict.
The Ukrainian navy said six of its seamen were wounded when Russian coast guards opened fire on three Ukrainian ships near the Kerch Strait and then seized them.
Russia said that three Ukrainian sailors were lightly injured and given medical assistance. Ukraine’s president, Petro Poroshenko, chaired an emergency meeting of his cabinet on Monday and asked parliament to introduce martial law for two months in response to what he described as Russian aggression.
“We consider it as an act of aggression against our state and a very serious threat,” the president said. “Unfortunately, there are no ‘red lines’ for the Russian Federation.” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin told reporters later Monday that Kiev believes that what happened near the Kerch Strait was no accident but “deliberately planned hostilities.” If adopted by lawmakers, the emergency measures proposed by Poroshenko will include a partial mobilisation and strengthening the country’s air defence.
They also include a plethora of vaguely worded steps such as the “strengthening” of anti-terrorism measures and “information security.” The fate of the Ukrainian seamen was not immediately clear. Klimkin insisted that they should be treated as prisoners of war while Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov did not say what legal status they have.
An emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council was also called for Monday. The European Union and NATO called for restraint from both sides.
Poroshenko had a phone call Monday with NATO SecretaryGeneral Jens Stoltenberg to discuss the situation. NATO later said t hat at Poroshenko’s request, its ambassadors and Ukraine’s envoy will hold emergency talks in Brussels later Monday.
NATO said Stoltenberg expressed the Us-led military alliance’s “full support f or Ukraine’s territorial integrity and sovereignty, including its full navigational rights in its territorial waters under international law.” Poroshenko said at a meeting of Ukraine’s national security council that “we demand that (the ships and crews) are urgently turned over”.