Short Interview with Russian UN Deputy Permanent Rep Dimitry Polanskiy about the Kerch incident and how Ukraine’s declaring Martial Law affects Donbass by George & Olga Eliason.
On November 25, 2018, Russian border patrol intercepted three Ukrainian warships on course for the Kerch bridge. Ignoring previous agreements, Ukraine did not tell Russia or schedule transit through the shallow water strait.
Commercial and state traffic have to schedule traversing the narrow channel because it handles traffic from one direction at a time. This is most important for vessels with a deeper draft because water depth is shallow going through.
A vessel’s draft is the distance from the waterline to the bottom of the hull. This determines the minimum depth needed for the vessel to safely navigate shallow water such as the Kerch Strait. The strait can hold a vessel with an eight-meter (26 ft) draft as long as pilot assistance is used.
According to Ukraine’s version of the Kerch incident, three warships were going from the port of Odessa to the port of Mariupol and Russia shot at and captured the vessels that were innocently traveling from port to port.
The Daily Signal reported “On Sunday, Europe’s two largest standing armies went to the precipice of a major war.
That day, Russian military forces attacked and captured three Ukrainian navy vessels that were transiting through the Russian-controlled Kerch Strait on their way from Ukraine’s Black Sea port of Odesa to Mariupol, on the Sea of Azov.
“This attack, of course, is not accidental. This is clearly an element planned by Russians in the escalation of the situation in the waters of the Sea of Azov, which has been lasting for several months. And I’m sure this is still not a culmination,” Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said Monday in remarks posted to his administration’s website.”
Reporting for the Daily Signal, Nolan Peterson gets the date and the fact an incident happened right. And with what’s become par for Ukrainian outlets since the civil war started, he rushes to get his story out or just ignores the facts and paints what has been shown as Ukraine’s attempt to provoke a violent Russian reaction.
The only big story Peterson brings to the table from the Ukrainian side is that Petr Poroshenko agrees there is no state of war between Ukraine and Russia as of November 25, 2018. No war, no armies in Donbass. No armies, just Ukraine’s continual lies to help rake in sympathy graft so lawmakers get rich.
The story goes on to say Ukraine notified the proper authorities about their passage, and then in what has become typical fashion the same story states bluntly that Ukraine did not fill out the required paperwork or notify anyone they were coming.
What do Ukraine’s captured naval captains have to say? They were there under orders.
“According to Vladimir Lesovoy, a third rank captain of the Ukrainian Navy, who acknowledged that he consciously ignored calls from Russian border guards to stop. Lesovoy also said that the goal of the raid was to stage a provocation.”
Ukraine Navy’s Lieutenant Alexey stated bluntly they all knew they were violating Russian territorial waters.
The story that is surfacing is the Ukrainian navy vessels had enough fuel onboard to make it to the Kerch strait but if everything was done properly. But with the usual 2-3 hour queue to go through, there was not enough fuel to make it to the other side.
Obviously unless they had prearranged refueling near or at the bridge, they had no plan of going through. They were under orders to travel full throttle to the Kerch Strait and not stop regardless of outcome.
Since the only option for fueling would probably come out of Mariupol and no refueling boats or barges have been seen, the captain was right- This was a provocation.
NATO, the EU, Canada, and the US Ambassador to the UN Haley unequivocally support Ukraine in its weird and unique fabrication of this event. US president Donald Trump isn’t following suit.
According to Ukraine, Russia was laying in wait for the opportune moment Ukraine would send warships near its new bridge with Ukraine continually crying about a Ukraine-Russian war. Russia would then capture Ukraine’s battle-tested tugboat and Soviet-era artillery ships for a museum piece perhaps?
Now that we’ve cut through the story and it’s clear even when addressed from the Ukrainian perspective, in its best light, it is still a military provocation.
While Ukrainian ships were in international waters no actions were taken. Warnings were given for Ukraine to follow the routine procedure to go through the Kerch Strait.
The procedures include scheduling the passage 48 hours in advance to going through at the Kerch Port Captain Office. You have to confirm the plan 24 hours ahead of arrival and again 4 hours before you go through.
What is Russia’s official reaction? I had a chance to ask Russia’s First Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN, Dimitry Polanskiy.
George Eliason- Why is Russia using such a soft approach to Ukraine? The Kerch Strait incident is a key example. Ukraine ignored the agreed-upon format for bringing warships into the strait and Russia came very close to addressing it like a border incident instead of a military provocation. Is there a denoted Red Line Russia is holding Ukraine too?
And I asked how does this or Ukraine’s declaration of Martial law affect Russia’s view as a guarantor of the Minsk Agreements?
RF Deputy PR to the UN Polanskiy– “Russia is trying to ignore Ukraine provocations to avoid war which will be imminent if we reply as we should. We don’t want to give Poroshenko a chance to improve his miserable ratings but if he attacks we will reply. We still stick to Minsk Agreements and there is no other way to solve this issue if Ukraine wishes to keep these regions in one state. Martial law is an internal affair of Ukraine unless it starts an offensive in Donbass.”
Why did Poroshenko declare Martial Law right after his tugboat was captured? Why did he wait five years into Ukraine’s civil war? Sources all over the Internet are looking at the regions under Martial law since November 26th. If we look at the area not under these restrictions which include voting in elections, it is where Poroshenko got at least 50% of the vote in 2014.
Does the Martial law declaration affect Donbass? I asked Lugansk People’s Republic (LNR) Foreign Minister Vladislav Danego and Deputy Foreign Minister Anna Soroka.
George Eliason– Kiev declared martial law. How does this affect Minsk 2?
LNR FM Danego– “We will work through the Europeans to ensure that it does not affect Minsk 2. The initiative from Merkel has already been on this topic – 60 days (for Martial Law) was adjusted to 30.”
According to the still surfacing story, Poroshenko wanted to declare Martial law for 60 days. Yulia Tymoshenko and Oleg Lyashko thwarted this in the Rada and pared it back to 30 days as a compromise.
And right on queue from the same article backing up the Foreign Minister’s statement- “Ursula von der Leyen, Germany’s defence minister, appeared to blame Moscow for breaching a 2003 agreement with Kiev that is supposed to allow for free shipping in the area.”
Merkel, not Tymoshenko is the one working overtime to smooth things out and not let Ukraine get out of hand. If Moscow had to agree to free shipping, the Kerch Strait is in Russian territorial waters. Russian land is on either side of the Kerch strait since Crimea held a referendum to rejoin Russia in 2014.
LNR Deputy FM Soroka- We don’t think that this (Ukrainian Martial Law) will affect Minsk in any way. All meetings within the framework of the Minsk process are still scheduled. Nobody mentioned any changes. Indeed, we must look at the reaction of Moscow, but again, except for notes and indignation at international venues, nothing will happen.
There are a few good reasons for Poroshenko to declare Martial law that have as much or more merit than him postponing or winning the 2019 Ukrainian presidential election by default.
Poroshenko timed both the Kerch incident and Martial law declarations right ahead of the G-20 summit to drum up support for Ukraine and get the international community in line against Moscow.
This might give him a little room back in Ukraine to complete his political triad of Army-Language-Faith. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church split with the Moscow Patriarchate was supposed to be the crown of his political life. Not every political leader can split Christianity successfully in his own lifetime.
And clearly, Petr Poroshenko is finding that out the hard way. When Poroshenko called a meeting of the bishops who would vote on autocephaly, only two out of more than eighty showed up. He’s found out that very few Orthodox leaders favor the idea.
Martial law gives Poroshenko the legal cover to suppress the areas where dissident Orthodox officials are and possibly still pass his Kiev patriarchate breakaway church through some semblance of a Church Sobor (Congress).
And last but never least, there is a new “cold Maidan” forming. There’s no heat and people are freezing. There’s no work and people are starving. They can’t pay their bills or buy medications. Instead of rebuilding the economic base needed to take the country out of abject poverty, Ukraine prosecutes a war with a former region. Instead of trying to keep agreements it signed which would reintegrate Donbass peacefully.
According to leading Ukrainian political scientist Mikhail Pogrebinsky, 75-80% of the population think Ukraine is going in the wrong direction. If this is the case, how do the Ukrainians have any credibility internationally?
The International community has a responsibility to oversee the tax dollars it gave Ukraine for reform that has been continually wasted. The EU has a responsibility to its own people not to exasperate the humanitarian situation it created in Ukraine that will end up flooding Europe with hopeless west and central Ukrainians.
Ukraine must be held to the same standard of law every other government is held instead of being given a free pass every time Ukraine or its nationalists go on a crime spree.
Just because “It (Ukraine’s nationalist government) was intellectually decapitated (according to Zbigniew Brzezinski and Ashton B. Carter), as a matter of deliberate policy during the Stalin years and beyond so that the most able and energetic Ukrainians were either killed or magnetically attracted to Moscow and Russified” doesn’t give Ukraine a free pass to relive their grandparents crimes or start regional wars in a 2018 world.
