Crisis looms as Russia seizes Ukrainian ships

RUSSIA yesterday ignored Western calls to release three Ukrainian naval ships it fired on and captured near Crimea at the weekend and accused Kiev of plotting with its Western allies to provoke a conflict.

Kiev in turn accused Russia of military aggression and put its armed forces on full combat alert, saying it reserved the right to defend itself. Ukrainian lawmakers were due to decide whether to introduce martial law for two months, a move President Petro Poroshenko has backed.

With relations still raw after Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea from Ukraine and its backing for a pro-Moscow insurgency in eastern Ukraine, the crisis risks pushing the two countries towards a wider conflict and there were early signs it was renewing Western calls for more sanctions on Moscow.

The crisis erupted when Russia’s border patrol boats belonging to Russia’s FSB security service seized two small Ukrainian armoured vessels and a tugboat after opening fire on them and wounding several sailors on Sunday. They had been trying to enter the Sea of Azov from the Black Sea. The FSB said it had opened a criminal case into what it called the ships’ illegal entry into Russian territorial waters.

Maritime traffic resumed yesterday in the Kerch Strait, which separates Crimea from the Russian mainland, but Moscow showed no sign of releasing the ships and their crews.

The stand-off is more combustible now than at any time in the past four years because Ukraine has rebuilt its armed forces, previously in disarray, and has a new generation of commanders who are confident and have a point to prove. Kiev is also strengthened by the knowledge that most Western governments, especially Washington, lean towards Ukraine and are liable to view Russia’s version of events with some scepticism.

Nato called an emergency meeting with Ukraine yesterday after the alliance’s head Jens Stoltenberg held a phone call with Poroshenko. He offered Nato’s “full support for Ukraine’s territorial integrity and sovereignty”.

The Russian foreign ministry accused Kiev of staging what it called a provocation to harm Russian interests and said it would react harshly to any attempts to undermine its sovereignty.

“It’s obvious that this… planned provocation was aimed at igniting another source of tension… to create a pretext to ramp up sanctions against Russia,” the ministry said.