Ukraine forces on combat alert
UKRAINIAN activists burn flares during a rally in front of Russian Consulate in Kharkiv, Ukraine, yesterday, in protest against Russia’s seizure of three Ukrainian vessels. RUSSIA yesterday ignored Western calls to release three Ukrainian naval ships and their crews it fired on and captured near Crimea at the weekend and accused Kiev of plotting with its Western allies to provoke a conflict.
In Ukraine, where armed forces were on full combat alert, President Petro Poroshenko sought parliament’s approval to impose martial law from tomorrow to strengthen national defences against possible “invasion” by Russia.
He assured sceptical lawmakers that his decree, which was to be put to a vote later yesterday, would not curb civil liberties or lead to a delay in elections scheduled for next year.
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 risked pushing the two countries into open conflict and there were early signs it was reigniting Western calls for more sanctions on Moscow.
Russia’s rouble currency weakened 1.4% against the dollar in Moscow yesterday, its biggest one-day fall since November 9, while Russian dollar-bonds fell.
Markets are highly sensitive to anything that could trigger new Western sanctions, and therefore weaken the Russian economy. A fall in the price of oil – Russia’s biggest source of revenue – has made its economy more vulnerable. In a phone call with Poroshenko, Nato Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg offered the alliance’s “full support for Ukraine’s territorial integrity and sovereignty”. Ukraine is not a member of the US-led military alliance, though it aspires to membership.
Washington’s envoy to the UN warned Russia that its actions were an “outrageous violation of sovereign Ukrainian territory”, said sanctions on Russia would remain in place and any escalation by Moscow would only worsen ties.
The EU, Britain, France, Poland, Denmark, and Canada all condemned what they called Russian aggression. German Chancellor Angela Merkel stressed the need for dialogue.
The stand-off in the Azov Sea is more combustible now than at any time in the past four years as 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.
Russia’s foreign ministry blamed Kiev for the crisis.
“It’s obvious that this painstakingly
EPA thought-through and planned provocation was aimed at igniting another source of tension in the region in order to create a pretext to ramp up sanctions against Russia,” it said.
The crisis erupted when Russia’s border patrol boats seized two small Ukrainian armoured artillery vessels and a tug boat after opening fire on them and wounding three sailors on Sunday.
The Ukrainian vessels had been trying to enter the Sea of Azov from the Black Sea via the narrow Kerch Strait that separates Crimea from the Russian mainland.
Russia’s human rights commissioner, Tatyana Moskalkova, said yesterday that 24 Ukrainian sailors were being detained. Three of the sailors were wounded and recovering in hospital.