Azov ports blockaded and a cancelled Trump–Putin meeting
A retrospective on 29 November 2018, when the fallout from the Kerch Strait incident reached Ukraine's ports and the G20 summit.
What did the Kerch Strait incident mean for Ukraine's ports and for diplomacy by 29 November 2018? Four days after it, the consequences were visible on both fronts.
The incident took place on 25 November 2018. Russia's Federal Security Service coast guard fired upon and captured three Ukrainian Navy vessels as they tried 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, as later accounts put it.
Ports under pressure
On 29 November 2018, Ukraine's Infrastructure Minister, Volodymyr Omelyan, said the ports of Berdiansk and Mariupol were effectively under blockade. By his account, Russia was refusing to let any Ukrainian vessel leave or enter the Sea of Azov.
President Petro Poroshenko went further and called on NATO to send warships to patrol the Sea of Azov.
A summit meeting dropped
The dispute also reached the G20 summit in Buenos Aires. On 27 November 2018, U.S. President Donald Trump had said he might cancel his planned meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin because of the maritime clash with Ukraine.
On 29 November 2018, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the meeting was still on. While flying to Argentina, Trump first said he would probably meet Putin and believed it was a good time to do so. Less than an hour later he announced on Twitter that, after conferring with his top national security advisers, he had cancelled it. His stated reason was that Russia had not returned the ships and sailors to Ukraine.
Elsewhere in the day's news
The same day, the Belgian Air Component reported that its F-16s, operating in the Baltic region on NATO's Baltic Air Policing mission, had intercepted Russian Flanker jets the previous day, allegedly because they had no flight plan.
On 28 November 2018, a Cabinet of Ministers decree had returned the buildings of the Pochaiv Lavra to the Kremenets-Pochaiv Reserve.
Taken together, the day's reports showed a dispute over access to the Sea of Azov that had moved quickly from the water to Ukraine's ports, to a call for NATO involvement and to the agenda of a leaders' summit.
