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What did Russia's return of three vessels mean?
Summary
A look back at the handover of three Ukrainian Navy vessels seized in the Kerch Strait in 2018.
What does it mean when a seized ship comes home? On 19 November 2019, the question hung over the return of three Ukrainian Navy vessels that Russia had taken during an incident in the Kerch Strait. As reported at the time, Russia returned the vessels on 18 November 2019, a year after their seizure.
The incident behind the handover
The vessels were captured on 25 November 2018. The Russian Federal Security Service coast guard fired upon and seized the three Ukrainian Navy ships after they tried to pass from the Black Sea into the Sea of Azov through the strait. They were on their way to the port of Mariupol.
The episode was the first time that Russian forces openly engaged Ukrainian forces during the Russo-Ukrainian War. That made the vessels' fate a visible marker in the wider confrontation, which was described at the time as the Ukrainian crisis within Russia–Ukraine relations.
A year later
The return on 18 November 2019 closed one specific chapter of the affair: the ships taken in the strait were back under Ukrainian control. The reports from that date describe the handover itself and place it in the context of the strained relations between Moscow and Kyiv, and they do not go further than that.
