What did Ukraine face on 26 November 2018?
A retrospective on the Kerch Strait incident and the border protests reported in the preceding days.
What was Ukraine confronting on 26 November 2018? Two very different pressures, one at sea and one on land, had emerged by 25 November.
On 25 November, a Russian border patrol ship, the Don, rammed the Ukrainian navy tug Yani Kapu near the Kerch Strait. The Ukrainian naval group was moving from Odesa to Mariupol at the time. Russian forces then opened fire on the group. Three Ukrainian vessels were seized and 23 sailors were taken prisoner, six of them wounded.
On the same day, a separate dispute played out at the western border. Owners of cars with foreign registration, known as "eurobliakhery", blocked checkpoints on the western section of Ukraine's frontier in protest.
Two fronts, one day
The two events were unrelated in cause. Together, they meant that Ukrainian authorities were dealing with a military incident involving captured sailors and with disruption at border crossings simultaneously. The sailors' fate and the state of the blocked checkpoints were the immediate matters that carried over into 26 November.
