What did Kyiv gain when its seized vessels came home?
A look back at the days around 21 November 2019, when the return of three Navy vessels and a deadly arsenal blast shared the national agenda.
What did Ukraine have to show for the days around 21 November 2019? On one side stood a returned fleet; on the other, a loss of life far from the front line.
On 18 November 2019, Russia returned three Ukrainian Navy vessels it had seized during the incident in the Kerch Strait the year before. That incident took place on 25 November 2018, when the Russian Federal Security Service coast guard fired upon and captured the three vessels as they attempted to transit from the Black Sea into the Sea of Azov on their way to the port of Mariupol. As reported at the time, it was the first occasion on which Russian forces openly engaged Ukrainian forces in the Russo-Ukrainian War.
The return closed one visible chapter of that confrontation. It came almost a year after the seizure.
The same week brought a different kind of news. On 15 November 2019, isolated explosions struck ammunition storage depots near the town of Balakliia in Kharkiv region. Two servicemen were killed and five others were wounded.
The two events were unrelated in cause, but together they showed the range of pressures on Ukraine's military and public institutions: a diplomatic episode with Russia reaching a conclusion, and a domestic accident at an ammunition depot leaving families in mourning and the wounded in hospital.
Looking back from 21 November 2019, the vessels had come home, yet the dangers facing Ukrainian service members were not confined to the Kerch Strait.
