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Ukraine Declares Martial Law Over Naval Attack by Russia Russia-Ukraine Fight Over Narrow Sea Passage Risks Wider War
(about 3 hours later)
Ukraine’s Parliament voted Monday to declare martial law in areas bordering Russia, responding to an attack a day earlier by Russian forces who fired on and impounded three Ukrainian naval vessels, leaving several sailors wounded. MOSCOW — Ukraine’s president put his nation on a war footing with Russia on Monday, as tensions over a shared waterway escalated into a crisis that dragged in NATO and the United Nations.
The action by Parliament, which called it a “partial mobilization,” takes effect Wednesday morning, will last for 30 days and represents a further escalation of tensions between Russia and Ukraine. Russia’s seizure a day earlier of three small Ukrainian naval vessels and 23 sailors — including at least three wounded in a shooting by the Russian side — was the first overt armed conflict between the two sides since the beginning days of the conflict in 2014, when Russian special forces occupied Crimea.
President Petro O. Poroshenko of Ukraine had requested the vote, which happened as criticism of Russia was rising at the United Nations Security Council and NATO over the Sunday attack. The opening of an additional front at sea, even if Ukraine lacks a real navy, introduced an unstable element into what had been a shadowy war. The conflict pitting Ukrainian soldiers against Russian-backed separatists in the breakaway Donbas region, in eastern Ukraine, has sputtered along for almost five years with more than 10,000 people killed.
Russia’s attempt to use the Security Council session to blame Ukraine for the violence backfired, as ambassadors from the United States, Britain, France and others accused Russia of recklessness and violating Ukraine’s sovereignty. The Kremlin, along with some Ukrainian opposition figures, called the martial drumbeats echoing from Kiev a domestic political ploy by its embattled president, Petro O. Poroshenko. They accused him of fearmongering in order to delay or at least reconfigure the March 31 election that he had seemed certain to lose.
Nikki R. Haley, the ambassador from the United States, called the episode an “arrogant act” by Russia that the Trump administration and the international community would not accept. Mr. Poroshenko delivered a speech to Ukraine’s Parliament asking it to approve the declaration of martial law starting on Wednesday, with the military already on full alert. The attack on the naval vessels near the shared waterway, the Kerch Strait, represented a new stage of aggression in what he called Russia’s “hybrid war” against Ukraine.
“This is a bold and frank participation of the regular units of the Russian Federation, their demonstrative attack on the detachment of the Ukrainian Armed Forces,” said Mr. Poroshenko, “This is a qualitatively different situation, a qualitatively different threat.”
Members of 450-member Verkhovna Rada, the Parliament, who were present voted overwhelmingly to support the measure — 276 to 30 — after the president agreed to dilute its scope.
Ukraine also received a boost from the international reaction, underscoring both the isolation of Russia from the West over the Ukraine conflict, and the desire to protect the international maritime convention that allows for unimpeded shipping through any strait.
“What you saw yesterday was very serious, because you saw actually that Russia used military force in an open way,” said NATO’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, during a news conference in Brussels following a meeting requested by Ukraine. “This is escalating the situation in the region and confirms a pattern of behavior which we have seen over several years.”
NATO was increasing its military presence in the area, he said, calling on Russia to allow freedom of navigation for Ukrainian ships in the Kerch Strait.
At the United Nations, Russia called a session of the Security Council in an attempt to force a discussion about what it called Ukrainian violations of Russian territorial waters. But Western nations quickly turned the session into a long criticism of Russia for its actions against Ukraine since 2014.
“Impeding Ukraine’s lawful transit through the Kerch Strait is a violation under international law. It is an arrogant act that the international community must condemn and will never accept,” Ambassador Nikki R. Haley of the United States told the council.
“As President Trump said many times, the United States would welcome a normal relationship with Russia, but outlaw actions like this one continue to make that impossible,” she said.“As President Trump said many times, the United States would welcome a normal relationship with Russia, but outlaw actions like this one continue to make that impossible,” she said.
And Britain’s ambassador, Jonathan Allen, warned that the confrontation could presage further efforts by Russia to gain full control of the waters it currently shares with Ukraine. Mr. Trump offered his own criticism — without specifically blaming Russia — when asked by reporters in Washington about the naval confrontation. “Not good. We’re not happy about it at all,” he said. “We do not like what’s happening either way.”
The Ukrainians also received a strong statement of solidarity from NATO’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, who said at a news conference in Brussels that all of the organization’s members “expressed full support for Ukraine’s territorial integrity and sovereignty.” He called on Russia to ensure “freedom of navigation” for Ukraine and demanded that Russia “release immediately the Ukrainian sailors and ships it seized.” Various European capitals also criticized Russia, calling for it to release the seized vessels and their crews. There were scattered calls for new sanctions against Russia.
The confrontation on Sunday, in the vicinity of the Kerch Strait, a narrow passage between the Black and Azov Seas, was a serious escalation in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine and a rare example of direct military engagement between the two countries. Though they have been locked in a vicious war for almost five years, much of the fighting has been between Ukrainian forces and Russian-backed separatists in the east of Ukraine. The Russians seemed to try to tamp down the confrontation, moving an old cargo vessel anchored to block passage through the Kerch Strait, and allowing commercial traffic to resume.
“This incident is a reminder that there is a war going on in Ukraine,” Mr. Stoltenberg said. The Kremlin remained largely silent for much of the day. It was left to Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov to address the issue, and his ministry accused Ukraine of creating threats to normal shipping traffic in the strait by violating international maritime law, and trying to foment a crisis for domestic political purposes.
Though details of the Sunday confrontation are still murky, Russia has acknowledged firing on three Ukrainian ships as they tried to pass through the strait. Russia then seized the ships as well as their crews. At least six sailors were wounded, three seriously, the Ukrainians said, though Russia claims their injuries are not life-threatening. Russian political analysts suggested that the Kremlin had no need to ratchet up its confrontation with Ukraine — it had already achieved what it wanted by destabilizing the country through support for the separatists.
Russia has said it was forced to open fire after the Ukrainian ships entered what the Kremlin called Russian territorial waters, and failed to heed warnings to stop. While President Vladimir V. Putin’s flagging domestic support may benefit from a fight with Ukraine, that would be outweighed by the risk of greater Western sanctions. “I do not see any benefits for the Kremlin from this confrontation,” said Nikolai Petrov, an analyst and professor of political science.
At the United Nations on Monday, the Russian delegation tried to convene an emergency session of the Security Council that would have condemned Ukrainian aggression, but was blocked by other members of the council. Asked about events during his daily briefing, Dmitri S. Peskov, Mr. Putin’s spokesman, framed the Russian actions against the Ukrainian boats as an interception, not an attack.
Russia’s representative, Dmitry Polyansky, lashed out at Ukraine, accusing its leaders of fostering hatred of Russia through brainwashing, and suggested that confrontation with Russia was advantageous for Mr. Poroshenko, who is behind in the polls ahead of elections in March. “The question here is of incursion into the territorial waters of the Russian Federation by foreign military vessels,” Mr. Peskov said. “They entered the territorial waters of Russia without responding to any queries from our border guards, in no way responded to offers to make use of pilotage service, and so on and so forth.”
In remarks ahead of the session, Ukraine’s ambassador, Volodymyr Yelchenko, warned that the clash at sea could make way for further incursions into Ukrainian territory by Russian forces. Ukraine has two major ports on the Azov Sea, Mariupol and Berdyansk, that depend on the free movement of ships through the Kerch Strait. The dispute over the waterway is fundamentally unresolvable because it hinges on different interpretations of who controls the territorial waters around the Crimean peninsula. Both sides tried to portray themselves as determined to protect the normal shipping that the other side was interfering with. Ukraine had previously sought and been granted permission for similar passages, according to official Russian accounts, but did not this time.
The violence occurred close to the 79th anniversary of the start of the Soviet Union’s war with Finland in 1939, a fact that Mr. Yelchenko said was no coincidence. But Ukraine wants to assert its continued sovereignty in areas which Russia considers its own, analysts said. Controlling passage from the Black Sea through the Kerch Strait into the Sea of Azov is a key element in asserting Russia’s broader claim to Crimea.
“What is happening today in the Azov Sea is reminiscent of the events of the 1930s,” he said. “Moscow clearly seeks to turn the Azov Sea into a Russian basin, and to use it to bring leverage to bear on Kiev,” wrote Mark Galeotti, an expert on Russian intelligence services at the Institute of International Relations in Prague, on Twitter. “It wants to demonstrate its capacity to act without having to worry about external constraint.”
The two sides signed an agreement in 2003 to guarantee free passage through the strait, but in recent months have been harassing each other’s ships. The port of Mariupol and a couple others are important for the Ukrainian economy for exports of steel and grain, as well as for imports.
Steven Pifer, a former American ambassador to Ukraine, said that the Kremlin might be testing the level of support for Ukraine using the waterway. “They can very easily back off,” he said. “But if they sense the reaction is weak, I think that they will continue the blockade.”
Earlier this year Mr. Putin inaugurated a $7.5 billion bridge across the strait, meant not least to assert its claim to Crimea with a physical link.
One strategic aspect of the design revealed by events on Sunday is that Russia could block the strait merely by anchoring a cargo ship in the one opening under the bridge — 185 meters wide and 35 meters high — large enough to allow the passage of ships.
President Poroshenko sought to portray events as part of a larger assault by Russia. During his speech to Parliament, he waved a sheaf of papers that he said detailed Ukraine’s intelligence about Russian preparations for a ground offensive. That seemed unlikely, given the lack of any clear military objective, analysts said.
There was, however, a widespread sense among opposition figures and analysts that Mr. Poroshenko aimed to put off the March election, noting that he had not called for martial law during previous points in the conflict when the fighting was far worse.
Mr. Poroshenko tried to assuage that criticism by cutting the period of martial law from two months to one, so it would not interfere with the official start of the campaign season on Dec. 31.
Other compromises mean that the martial law declaration will only affect the 10 provinces bordering Russia or Transnistria, a breakaway province of neighboring Moldova, also controlled by Russian-backed forces.
The president also promised that martial law would not be used to curb civil liberties or to announce a general military mobilization, and that it would only be enforced in the case of new attacks. Still, the very prospect of martial law could help boost support for him as a wartime leader.
Oleg Kashin, a Russian columnist and political analyst, wrote in the online publication Republic that the expansion of the shooting into the Sea of Azov seemed more like an extension of the endless skirmishing in eastern Ukraine than the start of any full-fledged war.
“The Sea of Azov is the most convenient space for the most spectacular political wrestling,” he wrote, calling it a “tiny reservoir” that nobody had ever considered a real sea.
He wrote that the sea belongs “only to Russia and Ukraine, and no third-party interests will be affected, even if tomorrow the entire surface of the Sea of Azov goes up in flames.”