US calls Russian plan to close Black Sea ‘unprovoked escalation’

THE U.S. State Department on Monday called Moscow’s decision to close parts of the Black Sea until October an “unprovoked escalation” that may ultimately impact access to Ukrainian ports.

Russian state media reported that Moscow intends to close parts of the Black Sea to foreign military and official ships for six months. Such a move could affect access to Ukrainian ports in the Sea of Azov, which is connected to the Black Sea through the Kerch Strait on the eastern tip of the Crimean Peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014.

“This represents yet another unprovoked escalation in Moscow’s ongoing campaign to undermine and destabilize Ukraine,” State Department spokesperson Ned Price said in a statement. “This development is particularly troubling amid credible reports of the Russian troop buildup in occupied Crimea and around Ukraine’s borders, now at levels not seen since Russia’s invasion in 2014,” he added.

Tensions between Russia and the West have been escalating in recent weeks following an uptick in fighting between Ukraine’s army and pro-Russia separatists in eastern Ukraine. Russia has massed its troops along Ukraine’s northern and eastern borders and on the Crimean Peninsula, which Moscow annexed from Ukraine in 2014.

Last week Russia also conducted navy drills in the Black Sea. More than 20 Russian warships took part in military exercises in the Black Sea, Interfax news agency reported on Tuesday, citing a statement from Russia’s Black Sea Fleet (BSF).

“More than 20 ships of the Black Sea Fleet conducted joint training with the crews of the Su-25SM3 attack aircraft of the Air Force and Air Defense,” BSF reported on Tuesday.

Planned exercises were carried out “in accordance with the plan of the control check of the Black Sea Fleet forces in the winter period,” it added.

“Earlier, more than 50 aircraft of the Southern Military District were redeployed to the Republic of Crimea as part of a control check,” the statement said. The Russian Army conducted exercises “to repel air attacks by means of a simulated enemy using active radioelectronic interference and conditional use of air defense means.”

“Three squadrons of attack aircraft of the Southern Military District conducted training on approaching a combat course, the conditional use of missile weapons for a detachment and withdrawal from a retaliatory strike from naval air defense systems,” the press release said, noting that: “The flights were carried out at extremely low altitudes in difficult hydrometeorological conditions.”

The decision to restrict the sailing of foreign military and official ships in parts of the Black Sea was published on April 14 in the bulletin of the Russian Department of Navigation and Oceanography of the Ministry of Defense.

“From 9 p.m. on April 24 until 9 p.m. on October 31, passage through the territorial sea of the Russian Federation for foreign military ships and other state vessels will be halted,” the state-run RIA Novosti news agency cited a defense ministry statement as saying.

The restrictions will affect the western tip of Crimea, the peninsula’s southern coastline from Sevastopol to Hurzuf, and a “rectangle” off the Kerch peninsula near the Opuksky Nature Reserve. The final area is near the Kerch Strait, which connects the Black Sea to the Sea of Azov and is of crucial importance for the export of grain and steel from Ukraine. The Kerch Strait became a scene of confrontation in 2018 after Russia seized three Ukrainian ships over alleged violations of its territorial waters.

Ukraine had been free to navigate the Kerch Strait along with Russia until 2014 when Moscow claimed full control of the waterway after annexing Crimea. The Kerch Strait is also the site of a costly 19-kilometer (12-mile) bridge connecting Crimea with mainland Russia that Moscow opened in 2018.

Ukraine’s foreign ministry on Thursday slammed the navigation restrictions, which were initially reported without specifics earlier this week, as a “usurpation of the sovereign rights of Ukraine.”

“Such actions of the Russian Federation are another attempt, in violation of the norms and principles of international law, to usurp the sovereign rights of Ukraine as a coastal state, since it is Ukraine that has the right to regulate shipping in these waters of the Black Sea,” the document emphasized. It also noted that this step grossly violates the right to freedom of navigation guaranteed by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, according to which “Russia must neither obstruct nor halt transit through the international strait to ports in the Sea of Azov.”