Russian President Vladimir Putin will not meet with Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko, a Kremlin official said in dismissal of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s call for direct diplomacy in the wake of a naval skirmish.
“There is no more need to calm the situation,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Tuesday, per TASS, a state-run outlet. “It happened the day before yesterday, when our border guards appeased the violators of the Russian state border.”
Recommended Stories
Russia seized three Ukrainian naval vessels that tried to pass through the Kerch Strait into the Sea of Azov, which is home to the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol. The clash is the first openly acknowledged direct conflict between Russian and Ukrainian forces since Putin authorized the 2014 annexation of Crimea and invasion of eastern Ukraine by what western observers assess were unmarked Russian forces.
“The United States condemns this aggressive Russian action,” Pompeo said Monday evening. “We call on Russia to return to Ukraine its vessels and detained crew members, and to respect Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity within its internationally recognized borders, extending to its territorial waters. We call on both parties to exercise restraint and abide by their international obligations and commitments. We urge Presidents Poroshenko and Putin to engage directly to resolve this situation.”
Russia fired on the three ships and detained two dozen sailors as an extension of their claim to sovereignty over Crimea, insisting that the Kerch Strait is part of Russian territorial waters. “Twelve out of twenty-four Ukrainian sailors detained in the Kerch Strait for breaching Russia’s borders have been arrested for two months,” TASS reported.
Pompeo and other U.S. officials reiterated that Russia does not have a legitimate right to control Crimea, which was previously held by Ukraine, and affirmed that the United States would not lift the sanctions imposed in response to the 2014 annexation.
“As President Trump said many times, the United States would welcome a normal relationship with Russia,” Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said Monday. “But outlaw actions like this one continue to make that impossible. The United States will maintain its Crimea-related sanctions against Russia. Further Russian escalation of this kind will only make matters worse.”
