Azov blockade and martial law: Kyiv's days of crisis
A look back at the diplomatic and security fallout from the Kerch Strait incident, as it stood in the days before 4 December 2018.
What did Ukraine's leaders and its partners make of the confrontation at sea as of 4 December 2018? The reports from the preceding days show a country dealing with a blockade, a new legal regime at home and a diplomatic reaction that reached as far as a G20 summit.
The trigger
The crisis began on 25 November 2018, when the Russian Federal Security Service coast guard fired upon and captured three Ukrainian Navy vessels in the Kerch Strait. The vessels had been trying to pass from the Black Sea into the Sea of Azov on their way to the port of Mariupol. It was the first time Russian forces had openly engaged Ukrainian forces during the Russo-Ukrainian War.
A blockade at sea
By 29 November, Ukraine's Infrastructure Minister, Volodymyr Omelyan, said the ports of Berdiansk and Mariupol were effectively under blockade, because Russia would not allow any Ukrainian vessels to enter or leave the Sea of Azov. President Petro Poroshenko asked NATO to send warships to patrol the sea. The reports do not show any such deployment being agreed.
Measures at home
Martial law had been imposed in Ukraine. On 30 November, Ukraine banned Russian men aged between 16 and 60 from entering the country. Poroshenko said the ban was meant to prevent the formation of private armies on Ukrainian territory. Russia said it did not plan to retaliate.
Diplomatic fallout
The incident also reshaped the diplomatic calendar. On 29 November, while flying to Argentina for the G20 summit in Buenos Aires, US President Donald Trump announced on Twitter that he had cancelled a planned meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. He said, after consulting his top national security advisers, that the time was not right because Russia had not returned the ships and sailors to Ukraine. Less than an hour earlier he had said he would probably meet Putin. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov had said that same day that the meeting was still on.
Russia's contacts with NATO were also in the news. The Belgian Air Component said that Belgian F-16s on NATO's Baltic Air Policing mission had intercepted Russian Flanker jets, reportedly because they had no flight plan.
Life went on
Not all Ukrainian news of those days concerned the confrontation. On 1 December, Oleksandr Gvozdyk beat Adonis Stevenson to become WBC light-heavyweight world champion. On 28 November, a Cabinet of Ministers decree returned the buildings of the Pochaiv Lavra to the Kremenets-Pochaiv Reserve.
Looking back
Taken together, the reports show how quickly a single naval incident spread into trade, domestic law and great-power diplomacy within days. The seized vessels and sailors had become a central point in Ukraine's appeals to its partners, and the blockade of its Azov ports was a concrete economic and political test for Kyiv.
