Russia blocked the passage to the Kerch Strait between the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea for civilian ships after the Ukrainian navy "Yany Kapu" (Yani Qapi) tugboat was rammed by a Russian Coast Guard ship Sea of Azov Sunday 25 November. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has assembled the war cabinet to assess the situation
The Kerch Strait connects the Sea of Azov to the Black Sea. Earlier this year, the Russian government opened a bridge of 19 kilometers across the strait, creating a road linking the Russian region of Krasnodar with the peninsula of Crimea, which was annexed to Russia by Ukraine in the 2014 with a coup "legitimized" by a plebiscite not recognized by almost all states.
In a statement released on Sunday, the Ukrainian defense ministry said that the traffic through the strait had been blocked by a tanker ship anchored near the bridge over the Kerch Strait. The unique photos of the sea giant used as a barrier are going around the world at this time. The Russian news agency TASS, quoting Alexei Volkov, general director of the Crimean ports, said that traffic through the strait was closed for security reasons. "Western countries are behind the provocation of Ukrainian warships in the Black Sea, which have entered the territorial waters of Russia", claimed the leader of the Republic of Crimea, today said Sergei Aksyonov. Sputnik, the official voice of Russian propaganda, has launched the scoop that "Poroshenko himself ordered to violate the borders of Russia".
The Ukrainian navy declared on the social media that two Ukrainian sailors were injured in the subsequent seizure of its ships by the Russian forces and that the Russian attack against them occurred after they withdrew and headed to Odessa, the port of the Black Sea from where they started their journey. "After leaving the 12 miles zone, the security service of the Russian Federation opened fire on the flotilla of the armed forces of Ukraine".
The Russian coast guard denies, as claimed by Kiev, that they have been informed in time of the flotilla transit. The presence of a tug, confirmed by both parties, engaged in towing one or even both units and the fact that the Port of Mariupol is specialized in the repair of boats of the class of the Ukrainian ones of the case, is an indication that probably Kiev does not he intended to create a provocation.
Beyond the risk, for now only hypothetical, of an enlargement to Russia of the conflict between the pro-Russian separatists and the Government of Kiev, Moscow for some weeks seems to exert a growing control over the commercial traffic and not just passing through the Kerch Strait , once a condominium of Ukraine and the Russian Federation and now placed in a juridical situation comparable to the Straits of Dardanelles and Bosphorus for Turkey and the Black Sea riparian countries. The objective, according to analysts is to strangle the city of Mariupol, the whose port is the main one on the Sea of Azov and which costs the maximum target for the separatists of eastern Ukraine.
Of course, looking at the calendar for the date of this escalation of the Russian-Ukrainian crisis, we want to exclude that it is not sought or that it does not constitute some form of communication between the two countries: November 25, this year, falls 85 anniversary of the Holodomor, the terrible famine caused by the Soviet regime that caused millions of victims. The USSR denied this tragedy to the end, manipulating the figures to hide the disappearance of eight million of its citizens.
Apart from this historical consideration, we will follow the next developments in the crisis.
