A Russian ship has opened fire on Ukrainian naval vessels in the Black Sea following a tense stand-off off the coast of the Crimean Peninsula, the Ukrainian navy has claimed.
Ukraine claimed Russian special forces had seized three of its ships and that two of its sailors had been wounded in the incident. The country’s president has called an emergency meeting of the military top brass.
Earlier, Ukraine said a Russian coast guard vessel rammed into a Ukrainian navy tugboat, resulting in damage to the ship’s engines and hull.
The incident took place on Sunday as three Ukrainian naval ships were transiting from Odessa on the Black Sea to Mariupol in the Sea of Azov, via the Kerch Strait.
A bilateral treaty gives both countries the right to use the sea, which lies between them and is linked by the narrow Kerch Strait to the Black Sea. But tensions around the sea have escalated since Russia annexed Ukraine’s nearby Crimea in 2014.
Moscow is able to control access between the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea after it built a bridge that straddles the Kerch Strait between Crimea and southern Russia.
Tensions surfaced on Sunday after Russia tried to intercept the three Ukrainian ships - two small armored artillery vessels and a tug boat - in the Black Sea, accusing them of illegally entering Russian territorial waters.
The Ukrainian navy said a Russian border guard vessel had rammed the tug boat, damaging it in an incident it said showed Russia was behaving aggressively and illegally.
Russia’s border guard service accused Ukraine of not informing it in advance of the journey, something Kiev denied, and said the Ukrainian ships had been maneuvering dangerously and ignoring its instructions with the aim of stirring up tensions.
Both countries have accused each other of harassing each other’s shipping in Sea of Azov in the past and the US State Department in August said Russia’s actions looked designed to destabilize Ukraine, which has two major industrial ports there.