On Monday, Russia acknowledged that its coast guard had opened fire on three Ukrainian vessels Sunday and seized the ships and their crews during an incident near the Kerch Strait, a narrow waterway connecting the Black Sea to the Sea of Azov. The same three Ukrainian naval vessels — two gunboats and a tugboat — had been involved in a separate incident Sunday in which Russia's coast guard tried to intercept the ships and rammed the tugboat. Russia says Ukraine's vessels were making an unauthorized trip through Russian waters in a deliberate provocation; Ukraine denied any territorial incursion and accused Russia of military aggression.
The Kerch Strait runs between Russia and Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula Russia annexed in 2014. Russia recently built a bridge spanning the strait, connecting Crimea to the Russian mainland. The new standoff threatens to dangerously inflame simmering tensions between the two countries, and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said early Monday he would ask parliament to consider authorizing martial law over the incident. You can see footage of the Russian ship ramming the Ukrainian tug, plus a map of the area, in this CNN clip.
The United Nations Security Council will hold an emergency meeting on the escalating Ukraine-Russia tensions on Monday, American U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley says, and both the European Union and NATO have urged restraint and a de-escalation, especially in regards to Moscow's move Sunday to block off the strait for an unspecified period. The Kerch Strait and Sea of Azov are shared territorial waters under a 2003 treaty between Ukraine and Russia, but Moscow has been increasingly enforcing access to the strait since 2015.
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A continued closure of the waterway would amount to an economic blockade of several strategically and economically important Ukrainian ports, The Associated Press reports, including Mariupol, the closest government-held city to the breakaway Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, controlled by Russian-backed separatists.
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