Atlantic Council fellow says US should send ships to Azov Sea (illegally) after Kerch standoff
RT,
26
November, 2018
A
senior fellow at the pro-NATO Atlantic Council has said the US should
send naval ships into the Sea of Azov to guarantee it stays open
after a skirmish between Russian and Ukrainian ships. Only problem
is, that would be illegal.
Anders
Aslund, a Swedish economist who lives in Washington D.C. and works
for the avidly anti-Russia think tank, implored the US and NATO
to “react
sharply” to
what he called “the
illegal Russian blockade of the international Sea of Azov.”
What is the EU going to do about the illegal Russian blockade of the international Sea of Azov? Instant action is called for! @FedericaMog @JunckerEU @eucopresident
Everything suggests that Russia slowly takes one step after the other to block the Azov Sea off from Ukraine & international shipping. The West & NATO should react sharply before it is too late.
Aslund’s
suggestion came after Russia opened fire on and seized three
Ukrainian navy boats on Sunday, accusing them of breaching the
Russian maritime border.
The
Ukranian vessels were sailing between two Ukrainian ports: from
Odessa in the Black Sea to Mariupol in the Azov Sea. The only
waterway that connects these is the Kerch Strait between Crimea and
mainland Russia. Kiev says it notified Moscow in advance that its
navy ships would be sailing through the area. Moscow denies that it
was given warning.
While
both Russia and Ukraine have freedom of navigation in the Kerch
Strait under a 2003 treaty, there are detailed technical rules on
how vessels should pass through the narrow, complex waterway. All
traffic in the area is controlled by the Crimean sea port of Kerch,
and every ship should contact the facility, report her route and
destination, and receive permission to sail through the Strait.
Unfortunately
for the Swedish economist, though he tweets with all the
authority of someone who was on the ships in question himself, it
seems he is lacking in this basic knowledge about the legality of his
proposal.
Luckily,
chief foreign affairs correspondent for The Wall Street Journal,
Yaroslav Trofimov, stepped in to help out, tweeting that aside from
the “practical
risks” which
might arise from US ships rushing into the kerfuffle, it would also
be “illegal
without Russian permission.”
Practical risks aside, it would be illegal without Russian permission according to the 2003 treaty between Russia and Ukraine that declared Azov to be “internal waters” and only guaranteed freedom of navigation for RUS and UKR military vessels. www2.ecolex.org/server2neu.php…
Trofimov
cited the 2003 treaty between Russia and Ukraine which declared the
Azov Sea to be “internal
waters” and
which only guarantees freedom of navigation for Russian and Ukrainian
military vessels.
There
is a practical problem with the proposal as well: the Azov Sea is
simply too shallow. US Navy’s Arleigh
Burke-class
destroyers have a draft of 9.3 meters (30 feet), while the *average*
depth of the Azov Sea is only 7 meters (23 feet), with the deepest
point being twice that.
Aslund,
who frequently raises eyebrows among more knowledgeable Russia
experts and is known for his dramatic hot takes on Twitter, also
compared the incident to Adolf Hitler’s invasion of Poland — so
the complexities of reality are unlikely to deter him.
That is what people said when the allies declared war on Hitler after his invasion of Poland.
He
also claimed that a quiet response to the incident from US officials
meant that President Donald Trump must have“strictly
ordered” US
officials not to speak about it.
By the end of the day, not one single US official has said a word against Russia's aggression in Ukraine. That can only mean that they were strictly ordered by POTUS not to do so. Why is POTUS supporting Russian aggression in Ukraine?!
Side show? I thought Western support of Ukraine was about democratic values, not geopolitical machinations. I very genuinely did.
The
Atlantic Council fellow also found himself in a heated spat with
multiple Moscow-based journalists and correspondents last week after
he scolded a Washington Post reporter for daring to write an article
suggesting that some Ukrainians harbored positive feelings toward
Vladimir Lenin.
Just back from Kyiv I found that disgracefully, @washingtonpost has published an absurd article "Ukraine’s post-Lenin identity crisis," as if Ukrainians miss Lenin monuments. Needless to say, written by Moscow correspondent @antontroian. thewashingtonpost.newspaperdirect.com/epaper/viewer.…
Journalists
from the Washington Post, Financial Times and the Guardian were
unimpressed that Aslund appeared to be implying that Moscow-based
journalists are unable to write authoritatively about Ukraine and
that they should refrain from criticizing the country, lest it offend
him or his group of friends.
Im not trying to teach anyone, let alone Ukrainians. Just curious why a Swede who lives in DC and goes to occasional conferences in five-star hotels should lecture a journalist, whether he be based in Moscow or on Jupiter, who’s gone and spoken to real people about their views
Anders, have you considered that these correspondents you so despise talk to a much broader range of Ukrainians than you? Or you think only nationalists/liberals/reformers worth listening to? & how can you say that how Ukr deals with Soviet legacy/nation building is unimportant?!
Anders, the point isn’t that Ukrainians are necessarily longing for Lenin - it’s that decommunization has created a void that remains as yet unfilled, as evidenced by Anton’s talks with ordinary Ukrainians. Which his living in Moscow has nothing to do with
Saying Ukrainians are still figuring out what to put on town squares in place of Lenin statues is *not* suggesting all Ukrainians miss Lenin monuments. Nor is that quote.
Russian
journalist Alexey Kovalev also waded into the debate to remind Aslund
that debate around post-Soviet identity in Ukraine is alive and well,
regardless of how he personally feels.
Since
the Kerch Strait incident, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko
has imposed
martial law in
the country — a move which could allow him to call off scheduled
elections and remain in power. Moscow has accused Kiev
of provoking the entire incident to win sympathies in the West and to
help Poroshenko remain in office.
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