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Would Trump still meet Putin after Kerch Strait?
Summary
A look back at 28 November 2018, as the maritime clash with Ukraine began to weigh on planned diplomacy and a Paris tribunal ruling hit Russia.
What did the Kerch Strait clash mean for Russia's diplomacy with Washington? On 28 November 2018, that question was still open, three days after the incident.
The clash took place on 25 November 2018. The Russian Federal Security Service coast guard fired upon and captured three Ukrainian Navy vessels that had tried to pass from the Black Sea into the Sea of Azov through the strait, on their way to the port of Mariupol. It was the first time Russian forces had openly engaged Ukrainian forces during the Russo-Ukrainian War.
A summit meeting in doubt
As reported on 27 November 2018, U.S. President Donald Trump said he might cancel his scheduled meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the G20 summit in Buenos Aires, due later that week. He gave the maritime clash with Ukraine as the reason. The remark placed the Kerch Strait incident directly in the way of a planned encounter between the two leaders.
A financial ruling from Paris
A separate matter also concerned Russia. On 26 November 2018, an international tribunal in Paris ordered the Russian Federation to pay 1.3 billion dollars to Oschadbank, the Ukrainian state savings bank. The ruling came in the same days as the strait incident, though the reports do not link the two.
What the day showed
By 28 November 2018, the maritime clash had become an issue in relations between Moscow and Washington, while Russia also faced a large financial award in favour of a Ukrainian bank. Whether the Trump–Putin meeting would go ahead was not yet settled.
