Ukraine bars entry to Russian men as conflict row escalates
Ukrainian officials yesterday upped the ante in their nation’s growing confrontation with Russia, announcing a travel ban for most Russian men and searching the home of an influential cleric of the Russian Orthodox Church.
The long-simmering conflict bubbled over last Sunday when Russian border guards rammed into and opened fire on three Ukrainian boats near the Crimean Peninsula, which Moscow annexed in 2014. The vessels were trying to pass through the Kerch Strait on their way to the Sea of Azov, where Ukraine has two major ports. The Russians then seized the ships and have detained their 24 crew members.
In response, the Ukrainian parliament on Monday passed the president’s motion to impose martial law in all border areas for 30 days.
Russia claims the boats were violating its border, while Ukraine says they were in international waters. The Kerch Strait is sensitive area for Russia, since it just built a longbridgefromthemainland to occupied Crimea there.
There’s been growing hostility between Ukraine and Russia since Moscow’s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, a move that greatly expanded Russia’s Black Sea coastline.
Russia has also supported separatists in Ukraine’s east with clandestine dispatches of troops and weapons. Fighting there has killed at least 10,000 people since 2014 but eased somewhat after a 2015 truce.
Petro Tsygykal, chief of the Ukrainian Border Guard Service, announced yesterday at a security meeting that all Russian males between 16 and 60 will be barred from travelling to the country while martial law is in place.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko told the meeting the measures were taken “to prevent the Russian Federation from forming private armies” on Ukrainian soil.
The announcement follows Thursday’s decision by US President Donald Trump to scrap his much-anticipated meeting with Russian leader Vladimir Putin at the G-20 summit in Buenos Aires.
Trump said it isn’t appropriate for him to meet with Putin since Russia hasn’t released the Ukrainian seamen.
A Crimea court this week ruled that the Ukrainian seamen will be kept behind bars for two months pending Russia’s investigation into the clash.
They have been taken from Crimea to Moscow.
Kogershyn Sagiyeva, a member of the Moscow oversight council, told the television station Dozhd that 21 Ukrainian seamen are already at the Moscow Lefortovo jail while three others are in a hospital in another jail.
She said she met with some of them and they appeared to be in good shape.
newsdeskts@scotsman.com