Russia's attacks on Ukraine must now be taken deadly seriously

On Sunday, the Russian Navy attacked Ukrainian naval vessels in a dramatic escalation of the conflict between the two countries, which began after Russia invaded Crimea and parts of eastern Ukraine in 2014.

Sunday’s incident, when Russian naval ships, supported by planes and helicopters, attacked and seized three Ukrainian vessels and wounded six sailors, was the first time the Kremlin’s forces have openly attacked Ukraine.

Many fear it is a prelude to a larger Russian attack and the Ukrainian government is now imposing martial law, starting tomorrow (Wednesday, Nov 28) for an initial 30-day period. The move puts the country on a war footing, allowing a general military call-up if necessary, and restricts movements in 10 provinces bordering Russia and the Black and Azov Seas.

Ukraine has been fighting against Russia and its proxies – created, funded and led by the Kremlin – since spring 2014 when Moscow invaded and annexed the Crimean peninsula and occupied a swathe of territory in the country’s eastern Donbas region. Some 11,000 Ukrainian military and civilians have died, mostly when fighting was at its most intense in the first year of war. A rickety 2015 ceasefire scaled the carnage down to a few score killed and wounded each month.

Previously Moscow has denied its military has been involved in the fighting, merely admitting it was supporting pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine. That fiction has been repeatedly disproved with overwhelming evidence showing the presence of regular Russian forces deployed in the Donbas conflict zone in eastern Ukraine.

The big difference this time is that Moscow has not tried to conceal that its forces attacked Ukraine. It has tried to blame the incident on Ukraine, but even some of Moscow’s usual apologists found the idea that two small Ukrainian vessels and a tugboat had launched a dangerous offensive against the Russian fleet too ludicrous.

The Sea of Azov is one of those backwaters hard for most people to place on a map, and probably only encountered in pub trivia competitions. It lies north of the Black Sea between Ukraine and Russia and, under a treaty, the two countries share control over it. Shipping is supposed to have free passage from the Black Sea to the Sea of Azov via the two and a half mile Kerch Strait.

That is particularly important for Ukraine as two of the country’s major ports, Mariupol and Berdyansk, which handle a large proportion of its exports, are on the Azov shore.

Tension between the two countries has mounted throughout the year as Russia disrupted merchant shipping heading to and fro those ports. In May, Russia completed a 12-mile long bridge joining its mainland to the Crimean peninsula it occupies. The structure restricted the places where vessels could pass, and made it easy for the Russian Navy to intercept them.

Since last spring, the Russians have pulled over, boarded and detained (sometimes for days), hundreds of merchant vessels heading for the Ukrainian ports. This drove up costs for the merchant vessels’ operators to such an extent that many abandoned the route.

Exports through the ports account for a huge share of the Ukrainian economy and, worried that trade was being strangled, the Ukrainian Navy sent boats into the Azov sea to provide escorts for merchant vessels.

And that is how three small Ukrainian vessels came to be in the Kerch Strait last Sunday. The Ukrainians say their tug was rammed and the vessels fired upon by Russian ships while Russian fighters and helicopters swooped around. Russian forces then boarded the Ukrainian vessels and towed them to the port of Kerch, where six wounded Ukrainian sailors are being treated in hospital.

Moscow claims the Ukrainian vessels entered Russian waters illegally. But that cannot be the case as, under the treaty, both Ukrainian merchant and naval ships are supposed to enjoy free passage through the narrow channel and the Azov Sea.

“The sanctions levelled by the West against Russia since it first invaded Ukraine do affect the Russian economy, but not devastatingly.”

Ukrainian and western analysts believe the attack had been carefully planned and the aim was to provoke Ukraine into a strong military response to give Moscow the pretext to launch a large-scale attack against Ukraine and perhaps seize more of its territory.

Former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine John Herbst said: “Clearly the Russians were prepared to act as they have and it had been cleared at high levels in Moscow. It’s unimaginable that the Russian sailors in the straits of Kerch would have fired upon Ukrainian vessels without this being cleared way at the top of the chain to Mr Putin himself or someone very close to him.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s popularity always increases when his forces kill Ukrainians or Syrians. His ratings have been flagging at home recently and so a victory in a clash with Ukraine could have provided a nice popularity boost for the Russian dictator.

It likely isn’t a coincidence that the episode happened when much of Washington DC was away celebrating over the thanksgiving weekend – and while EU countries were preoccupied by Brexit.

Ukraine didn’t react as Moscow hoped, and for now it hasn’t got its pretext for reigniting a “hot” war. But the Kremlin’s intentions are clear, and unless the West, led by the U.S. and the EU, imposes some severe penalties, Moscow will repeat such actions.

The sanctions levelled by the West against Russia since it first invaded Ukraine do affect the Russian economy, but not devastatingly. Ukraine and some of its foreign supporters are saying it’s now time to take some of the really hard stuff out of the cupboard. One such measure would be banning Russia from the SWIFT international payments system used by banking and other financial institutions. That would impose crippling restrictions on Russia’s economy.

Britain, the U.S. and Canada have led the way in military aid to Ukraine, and troops from these and some other NATO countries have sent contingents to train Ukrainian military. But so far only America has provided some lethal weapons, portable anti-armour missiles. Much more is needed, with maritime defence weaponry a priority.

Only last week the British defence secretary Gavin Williamson pledged support for Ukraine, ordered more military advisers there and said a British naval ship would be sent to the Black Sea to underscore that “as long as Ukraine faces Russian hostilities, it will find a steadfast partner in the United Kingdom.”

Moscow has shown its contempt for international law and sanctions haven’t been very persuasive. They never are against autocratic regimes, because the corrupt wealthy rulers continue their lavish lifestyles while the poor and powerless bear the brunt of the hardship. That happened in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq where the regime leaders imported luxuries, including food and containers of whisky, while ordinary people went hungry and the sick died because of a lack of medicines.

Russian forces outnumber Ukrainians by probably ten to one. So Ukraine needs those steadfast partners to provide a serious deterrent in the form of enough cutting edge weaponry to make any Russian attack extremely painful for Moscow.

If Moscow feels the West won’t act decisively it will increase its aggression in Ukraine. So far, the conflict has played out hundreds of miles from EU borders in a far-away corner of Ukraine, but there is no guarantee it will remain that way; if Moscow openly invaded, the fighting would spread to Ukraine’s western frontier where it borders four NATO countries, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania.

All of those countries, and others close in the region like Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, have felt the Russian boot on their neck in the past and are unwilling to repeat the experience. They may want to help Ukraine before she is vanquished, and they become next on Moscow’s hit list.

What might then unfold is impossible to predict, but you can guarantee it would be nasty.