The voyage of the flotilla ukraine by the strait of Kerch, miscarried on the 23rd of November by frontier guards russians, is presented by Moscow as a perfidious threat to the State. The media russians inserted in this conceptual framework the videos, disseminated on Tuesday by the Federal Security Service (FSB, of which depend on the troops frontier guard) in which they give their testimony, three of the 23 marine ukrainians arrested after the shooting of three small ships (two cruisers and a tugboat).
The sailors were imprisoned on the Crimean peninsula and on Tuesday afternoon, a court in the city of Simferópol had sent 12 of them to pretrial detention for two months, until the 25th of January, after accusing them of having illegally entered the territorial waters of the Russian federation.
The bilateral treaty of Cooperation in use of sea of Azov and the Kerch strait of 2003, provides that the ships of Russia and Ukraine, both merchant and military, “they enjoy free navigation” in the area, a principle enshrined in article 2 of the document.
The three marine ukrainians shot by the FSB acknowledged that they had entered into the territorial waters of Russia. Since the annexation of Crimea in 2014, it is impossible to penetrate in the Kerch strait without sailing that Russia considers as its own. The means of communication Russian, however, stress that the vessels will be placed in the “territorial waters” prior to the incorporation of the Crimea.
according To the letter and spirit of the treaty of 2003, Ukraine exercised its right, whatever the intentions of those who gave the order to shift the fleet and the margin of possible failures of procedure in the exercise of their right. On this point, Russia and Ukraine disagree on whether or not there was prior notice.
in Addition to recognize that penetrated territorial waters, Russian, sailors are Ukrainian displayed by the FSB claimed that they fulfilled orders and one of them said “to have been aware that the passage [of the straits] had the character of a provocation”. Another found that his battleship had weapons, which is nothing especially for a military vessel. Television Russian state magnified these statements in isolation, without addressing the legal framework that protects the passage of military vessels of ukraine by the strait of Kerch.
“quite some time Ago that Ukraine puts to the test the possibility to freely pass through the Kerch strait” to what he “has of course every right,” said Vladimir Kaçak İddaa Mílov, an opposition politician Russian that in the past he was deputy minister of Oil. According to Mílov, the Russian authorities have given orders “not to miss” in the future [through the strait of Kerch] and on the ground, tried to put into practice this order “the way that they knew how”. “Putin is silent because she does not understand how to act in the future. This story has not received any positive element and from the legal point of view the situation is not good for you,” says the politician on his page on Facebook. “If the idea was to frighten ukrainians so that it does not get more, after what happened most likely is that you get back,” said Mílov, and pointed out that, for president Vladimir Putin, the consequence of what happened is an “impulse fresh to the discussion on a new round of sanctions.”
In recent statements to Kommersant, the deputy minister of Russian Foreign, Georgui Karasin said the Kerch strait is a “major artery international” and said that Russia is not planned to close it. Karasin stressed, however, that Moscow is opposed to the passage through the straits for military vessels of third countries. After the incident, Russia was closed for several hours during the Kerch strait, which some interpret as an action of first refusal to introduce a regime more restrictive and controlled by the area in anticipation of an increase of war potential to be Ukrainian in a region that is very vulnerable and strategic. By the ports of ukraine the sea of Azov is carried out the trade of the great mining centers and industrial southeast of Ukraine, and also takes place the export of cereals. Analysts, both Russian and Ukrainian, have elaborated a number of hypotheses to explain the motivation of the order given to the fleet to cross the strait, and the reaction of the border guards of firing on the ships. These assumptions are difficult to verify and are formulated in terms of the internal politics of Ukraine (the perceived interests of the president Poroshenko), and the internal politics of Russia (the struggle between various departments of the Administration in Russian)
