A group of NATO diplomats will assemble Monday for an “extraordinary meeting” with Ukrainian officials to discuss Ukraine’s naval clash over the weekend with Russia off the coast of Crimea, the alliance announced.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg scheduled the NATO-Ukraine Commission meeting at the request of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko.
Stoltenberg summoned the commission after Russian forces fired on Ukrainian vessels entering the Kerch Strait, a key waterway connecting the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol to the Black Sea and the Mediterranean Sea. Russia has tightened control of the area since the 2014 annexation of Crimea, which “gave it control of both sides of the strait,” as AFP explained.
“The Secretary General expressed NATO’s full support for Ukraine’s territorial integrity and sovereignty, including its full navigational rights in its territorial waters under international law,” the NATO bulletin said.
Russian coast guard vessels fired on three Ukrainian small navy vessels that entered the strait, after accusing them of violating Russian sovereign territory, and wounded a handful of sailors.
“We consider it as an act of aggression against our state and a very serious threat,” Poroshenko said, according to the Associated Press. “Unfortunately, there are no ‘red lines’ for the Russian Federation.”
Russia is launching “a criminal case” over the Ukrainian entrance into the strait, in keeping with its claim to sovereignty over the Crimean peninsula seized from Ukraine in 2014.
“When the Ukrainian side was planning this provocation, they must have calculated the additional benefits they wanted to derive from this situation expecting the U.S. and Europe to blindly support the instigators, as usual,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Monday, according to TASS, Russia’s state-run outlet.
