What did Russia's return of Ukrainian ships signal?

What did it mean when Russia handed back three Ukrainian Navy vessels? By 22 November 2019, the return, reported on 18 November 2019, was the most recent development in a dispute that began in the Kerch Strait a year earlier.

The vessels had been seized during the Kerch Strait incident of 25 November 2018. On that day, the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) coast guard fired upon and captured three Ukrainian Navy vessels. They had tried to pass from the Black Sea into the Sea of Azov 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.

Against that background, the handback was a concrete step within Russia–Ukraine relations, which were then still marked by the Ukrainian crisis. It resolved the fate of the three ships. Nothing in the reports of 18 November 2019 tied it to wider changes in the relationship, and this retrospective does not read more into it.

The timing is the other notable point. The ships came back just days before the first anniversary of the seizure, after almost a year in Russian hands. The incident had put the Kerch Strait at the centre of the confrontation, and the return of the vessels closed one visible chapter of it.