Berdiansk and Mariupol under pressure: the Azov blockade claim
A retrospective on how Ukraine described the Sea of Azov situation, and its appeal to NATO, in the days before 5 December 2018.
What did the Sea of Azov standoff mean for Ukraine's coastal regions by 5 December 2018? The reports from the days just before that date point to a pressure on ports that mattered directly to the south-east.
On 29 November 2018, Ukraine's Infrastructure Minister Volodymyr Omelyan said the ports of Berdiansk and Mariupol were effectively under blockade. According to him, Russia was refusing to let any Ukrainian vessels leave or enter the Sea of Azov. The claim was specific: both ports depended on sea access, and that access, as he described it, had stopped.
The same day, President Petro Poroshenko called on NATO to send warships to patrol the Sea of Azov. The appeal moved a regional shipping problem into the sphere of alliance politics.
A wider backdrop
Also on 29 November 2018, the Belgian Air Component reported on Twitter that its F-16s, flying in the Baltic region for NATO's Baltic Air Policing mission, had intercepted Russian Flanker jets on the previous day, allegedly because they had no flight plan. The incident was far from the Azov coast, but it was reported alongside Kyiv's appeal as a sign of NATO and Russian forces meeting in other theatres.
For Berdiansk and Mariupol, the central point as of early December 2018 was practical: Ukrainian officials said shipping had effectively halted, and Kyiv was seeking a response from its partners.
