Home › Politics › What Russia's return of Ukrainian ships signalled
What Russia's return of Ukrainian ships signalled
Summary
A look back at the handover of three seized navy vessels, reported on 18 November 2019, and the Kerch Strait incident behind it.
What did it mean when Russia handed back three Ukrainian Navy vessels? On 21 November 2019, the move was still fresh: three days earlier, on 18 November 2019, Russia had returned the ships it seized in the Kerch Strait the previous year.
The seizure dated from 25 November 2018. On that day the Russian Federal Security Service coast guard fired upon and captured three Ukrainian Navy vessels as they 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.
Why the return mattered
The vessels had been held for almost a year, so their return closed one concrete part of a dispute that had been classed within the wider Ukrainian crisis in Russia–Ukraine relations. The handover resolved the question of the ships themselves.
The reports from that period did not set out what the return would mean for the broader relationship between Moscow and Kyiv, and it would be a stretch to read it as more than what it was: a single, specific step on a contested issue. Its significance lay in the fact that the vessels at the centre of the first open clash were back under Ukrainian control.
