The Kiev Ministry drew attention to the fact that Russia, through such measures, repeatedly violates the rules and principles of international law, and “violates” the sovereign right of Ukraine as a coastal state, since Ukraine has the right to regulate maritime transport in that part of the Black Sea correspondent MTI in Ukraine.
According to Kiev, such measures violate the right to freedom of navigation guaranteed by international documents. According to the file, Russia has deepened the conflict, now not only on land, but at sea as well.
The Ukrainian news portal Pravda quoted the ministry as saying in a statement that “the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs expresses its strong protest against such actions on the part of the Russian Federation and calls for an immediate cancellation of the decision to illegally close the Black Sea waters.” The Foreign Ministry also called on the international community to increase pressure on the Kremlin.
There was an incident in Kercsi
In November 2018, the Russian Coast Guard opened fire on three Ukrainian warships in the Black Sea, near the Kerch Strait, 13-14 nautical miles off the coast of Crimea, which Ukraine arbitrarily separated from Ukraine, and then captured it. Pursuit of 24 of their crew, began and imprisoned. In the summer of 2019, Ukrainian Chief of Staff Ruslan Homchak stated that Ukraine would not attempt to cross the Kerch Strait in a similar manner again with warships.
Recently, relations between Ukraine and Russia have become particularly tense with increasing ceasefire violations in the crisis zone in the Donetsk Basin, and four Ukrainian soldiers were killed on 26 March. Since then, more than ten Ukrainian soldiers have been killed in the region along with them. Kiev and Moscow hold each other responsible for exacerbating the crisis.
Homchak on March 30th in the Kiev Parliament spoke about Russia Military practice Under the guise of the Russian-Ukrainian border, as well as in the occupied territories of the Donetsk Basin and the Crimean Peninsula, 28 Russian tactical regiments gathered, and more units arrived.
Yulia Mendel, press secretary to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, said on a TV program last Sunday that Russia had gathered forty thousand soldiers along the Ukrainian border and the same number in the Crimea. Since the beginning of this year, 26 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed. Five soldiers have been killed in the armed conflict since the ceasefire came into effect in July at the end of last year. Mendel said that the Ukrainian Armed Forces are not planning an offensive operation in the Donetsk Basin.
