Kerch Strait. Photo: Bai Xueqi / Xinhua News Agency / PA Images. All rights reserved.Early in the morning of 25 November, three Ukrainian vessels – the Nikopol gunboat, the Berdyansk gunboat, and the Yany Kapu tugboat – set sail from the Black Sea port of Odessa and advanced towards Mariupol, on the Sea of Azov, via the Kerch Strait. The Ukrainian Navy would subsequently describe this as a “planned movement” of ships.
In accordance with international norms, the Ukrainian navy had given the Russian side advance warning of their intentions, notifying a coast guard post of the FSB’s Border Service, as well as the seaports of Kerch and Kavkaz, that the vessels would be passing through the Kerch Strait. Though the information was received, no response followed. The FSB later declared that the Ukrainian vessels had “violated Russian territorial waters” and dispatched four ships to confront them. One of these ships, the border guard patrol ship Don, rammed the Yany Kapu tugboat (according to an investigation by Bellingcat, Russian ships rammed the latter at least four times). Russian ships then blocked passage under the Kerch Bridge by running aground a tanker on the Azov side, and scrambled two missile-armed combat helicopters to escort the Ukrainian ships.
The Berdyansk gunboat after the damage. Source: Franak Viačorka / Twitter.The blocking of the passage to the Azov Sea continued until the evening. At 19:00 Kyiv time, the Ukrainian ships made to exit the Kerch Strait and return to Odessa, only for Russian vessels to set off in pursuit with demands that they stop their engines. The Ukrainian ships had already left the 12-mile (22.2-kilometre) territorial zone around Crimea when the Russian ships opened fire on the Berdyansk, damaging it. The Nikopol and the Yany Kapu were forced to stop, and all three ships were subsequently seized by Russian special forces.
