Two Ukrainian ports in the Azov Sea, Berdyansk and Mariupol, have been blocked by Russia as ships are prevented from leaving and entering, Ukraine's infrastructure minister Volodymyr Omelyan said. Overall, 35 ships were prevented from carrying out normal activities.
The Ukrainian minister on Facebook also said that only ships moving to Russian ports on the Azov Sea are allowed to transit.
"The goal is simple: by putting a blockade on Ukrainian ports on the Azov Sea, Russia tries to oust them from Ukraine. Absurd because it is a territory of Ukraine, in accordance with all international laws“Omelyan added.
Omelyan said 18 ships were waiting to enter the Azov Sea, including four in Berdyansk and 14 in Mariupol. There is also a line of nine ships that have to leave the Azov Sea and eight other ships stand near the moorings of the port entrance.
Grain and steel are the most transported commodities in Azov's ports. Russia seized three Ukrainian navy ships and their crew on Sunday near the Crimean peninsula, which Moscow dubiously annexed in 2014. Russia claims that the three Ukrainian navy ships entered Russian waters illegally - a charge which Ukraine strongly rejects.
The United States and the European Union have both imposed sanctions on Russia for its behavior towards Ukraine since 2014, when Moscow annexed Crimea after a pro-Russian leader was overthrown in Kiev.
Moscow later backed pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine in a conflict in which over 10.000 people were killed. Major fighting ended in a 2015 ceasefire, but mortar exchanges are still frequent.
The Sea of Azov, particularly the Kerch Strait, divides Crimea from the rest of the Russian Federation. Putin, writes Occhi della Guerra, to obviate this considerable geographical obstacle, immediately gave the green light to the construction of a bridge that joined the two banks of the strait. This work, recently opened, therefore allows Crimea to remain connected to what is now the motherland, avoiding having to depend either on the sea or on the passage into Ukrainian territory.
Strategic work of fundamental importance for the Russians (so much so that it is constantly monitored by the armed forces of Moscow), but which from the Ukrainian point of view actually represents a move not only aimed at excluding any return of Crimea to Ukraine, but also, to said of the nationalists, to "suffocate" their ports in the Sea of Azov. Basically, Kiev believes that the bridge was built at a height made specifically to keep Ukrainian merchant ships out of the way or to make the passage of ships much more difficult, giving the Russians full control over the commercial and military routes between the Black Sea and the Sea. d'Azov.