Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin has warned that the Kremlin shouldn’t be allowed to legitimize its occupation of Crimea and its ongoing annexation of the Azov Sea, following reports that Russia would allow European monitors to observe freedom of navigation through the Kerch Strait.
Speaking at a press briefing with his German counterpart Heiko Maas on Jan. 18 in Kyiv, Klimkin said the proposed monitoring mission must be based on the standpoint that Russia had usurped the sovereign rights of Ukraine.
Freedom on navigation in the Azov Sea and Kerch Strait – a narrow passage that connects the Azov and Black seas – has to be based on the principles of international law, Klimkin said.
“Russia shouldn’t get an opportunity to manipulate the monitoring mission,” he said. “That is, for instance, Russia’s attempt to draw German and Russian observers to the Kerch port and thus politically legitimize the occupation of Crimea.”
Germany proposed to expand the mandate of the Special Monitoring Mission (SMM) to Ukraine of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, or OSCE, in December, suggesting it also cover the Kerch waterway after Russia began blockading the strait. Kremlin officials initially rejected that proposal but have since changed their mind about a monitoring mission.
Before visiting Kyiv on the same day, German Foreign Minister Maas also met with his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov in Moscow, who said that Russian president Vladimir Putin had agreed to German and French monitors.
Last November, Russian coast guard vessels and special forces soldiers attacked and seized three Ukrainian navy boats as they passed through the Kerch Strait en route from Ukraine’s south-eastern Black Sea port of Odesa to Mariupol, a Ukrainian port city on the Azov Sea.
Russia falsely claimed the boats had trespassed its territorial waters surrounding Crimea, a peninsula which is still internationally recognized as part of Ukraine despite Russian occupation since 2014.
Wary of Russia’s growing aggression in the Azov Sea, Ukraine imposed a 30-day martial law in 10 regions situated at the Black Sea and the Azov Sea as well as those bordering with Russia and Moldova’s Transnistria region with Russian military presence.
“The fact, the idea of having to get a permission from the occupant to the occupied territory is inadmissible,” Klimkin said.
But Germany insists that Russia should be included in the discussions about the format of any future monitoring mission.
“In my conversation with Lavrov, I clearly made a point that Russia has to ensure free passage through the Kerch Strait. December crisis should not happen again,” Maas said at a press briefing in Kyiv on Jan. 19.
“German government also demands immediate release of Ukrainian sailors and other political prisoners held in Russia. This issue has to be solved by the Russian side,” he addded.
The German Foreign Minister also called upon both sides, Ukraine and Russia, to “de-escalate” the conflict, not only in the Kerch Strait, but in eastern Ukraine too, where the Kremlin and its proxies hold control over parts of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, while providing military support to separatists.
Meanwhile, Russia has appeared to remain deaf to the appeals of foreign diplomats and officials and refuses to abide by international agreements. Last week, a Moscow court prolonged the arrest of 24 Ukrainian sailors who were detained in November as Russia’s war in the Donbas continues into its fifth year amid stalled Minsk Protocol negotiations.
Russia’s illegal blockade of the Kerch Strait has posed a serious threat to the livelihood of two Ukrainian port cities on the Azov Sea, Mariupol and Berdyansk, whose economy is heavily dependent on shipping steel and grain exports.
