Home › Security › Kerch Strait aftermath: martial law and a UN request
Kerch Strait aftermath: martial law and a UN request
Summary
A look back at the diplomatic and legal moves that followed the seizure of three Ukrainian Navy vessels, and what they set in motion.
What happened on 26 November 2018, the day after Russian forces fired on and seized three Ukrainian Navy vessels near the Kerch Strait Bridge? It was a day of institutional responses, in Kyiv and in New York.
The incident
On 25 November 2018, Russia stopped three Ukrainian Navy vessels from passing under the bridge by blocking it with a cargo ship. Russia said the vessels had violated its territorial waters and ignored warnings. The ships and crews were seized after shots were fired. Russia said three Ukrainians were wounded; Ukraine said six of its sailors were wounded and denied that its ships had done anything wrong. As later background describes it, the vessels were heading from the Black Sea into the Sea of Azov on their way to Mariupol, and the Russian Federal Security Service coast guard carried out the attack. It was the first time Russian forces had openly engaged Ukrainian forces during the Russo-Ukrainian War.
Kyiv's response
The same day, an emergency meeting of Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council was convened over the blockade of the strait and the seizure of the vessels. Afterwards President Petro Poroshenko said he would ask the Verkhovna Rada to support a declaration of martial law. The parliament was set to meet in emergency session at 4 p.m. local time on 26 November.
The Rada duly approved martial law on 26 November, in 10 oblasts of Ukraine, for a period of 30 days. The decision was geographically limited rather than nationwide, and it carried a fixed term.
Moscow's move
Also on 26 November, Russia asked for an urgent meeting of the United Nations Security Council. Both sides therefore sought to frame the episode before international and domestic audiences within a day of the shooting: Kyiv through a legal step at home, Moscow through a request to the UN body.
Shipping resumes
The Kerch Strait was re-opened to commercial shipping on 26 November. The blockade, which had triggered Ukraine's emergency meeting, thus lasted for a short time, although the seized vessels and their crews remained in Russian hands at that point.
What the day showed
The sequence was fast: a confrontation at sea on 25 November, a security council meeting in Kyiv the same day, and by the next day a parliamentary vote, a Russian call for the UN Security Council to meet, and the reopening of the strait. The opposing accounts of what happened to the ships and the wounded sailors were already fixed on those two days, and the questions of who had violated whose waters were central to everything that followed.
