Ukraine calls out Russia over sea blockade
MARIUPOL: Seagulls whirl over the docks of Ukraine’s port of Mariupol on the Sea of Azov as huge cranes once used to unload ships’ cargoes stand idle.
The uncharacteristic quiet is the product of rising tensions in the small sea, the waters of which Russia and Ukraine agreed to share more than a decade ago, but is now the latest theatre in the bitter conflict between the two nations.
Russia’s annexation of the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine in 2014 means ships must now pass through a narrow strait bordered by Russian-controlled territory on both sides, while Kremlin-backed rebel regions of eastern Ukraine are uncomfortably close to Mariupol.
In a growing crisis, Kiev and the West accuse Russia of deliberately blocking ships from entering the sea.
“The whole time I’ve worked here, I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Sergiy Kostyrko, a foreman who has worked at the Mariupol docks for 23 years. “Ships have become very rare visitors to our port.”
Ukraine criticises what it sees as a deliberate move by Moscow to block the Kerch Strait, the only shipping route into the Azov Sea, where Ukraine’s commercial ports of Mariupol and Berdyansk are crucial gateways for its metallurgy industry exports.
Kiev has warned that Russia could even launch an attack on Mariupol.
Russia is trying to block Ukraine’s ports on the Sea of Azov acting “to escalate tensions and, it cannot be ruled out, to carry out a military operation ( including) attacks on Mariupol”, Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko declared in July.
In a sign of the conflict’s growing scale, the United States has condemned Russia for impeding maritime transit as part of a campaign “to undermine and destabilise Ukraine”.
“We call on Russia to cease its harassment of international shipping in the Sea of Azov,” the US Department of State said in a statement in August.
So far, this is purely a trade conflict, but there is a risk it could escalate into a military standoff between Ukraine and Russia, on top of Kiev’s ongoing four-year war with Kremlinbacked rebels in the east that has claimed more than 10,000 lives.