KHABAROVSK (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 21st April, 2019) Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has expressed a belief that NATO will not provide military support to Ukraine and will not take part in new military provocations of the Kiev authorities in the Kerch Strait.
"[NATO] will maybe support [Ukraine] morally and politically. I do not see a scenario with NATO ships joining these adventurers to organize a military provocation. I do not imagine such a situation, and, taking into account the information we possess, I have grounds to believe that NATO has already decided everything for itself," Lavrov told the Russian Zvezda broadcaster in an interview.
In November 2018, Ukraine's Berdyansk and Nikopol gunboats, and the Yany Kapu tugboat illegally crossed the Russian maritime border as they sailed toward the Kerch Strait, the entrance to the Sea of Azov. Russia seized the Ukrainian vessels and detained crew members after they failed to respond to a demand to stop. After the incident, a criminal case on illegal border crossing was opened in Russia.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the incident was a provocation prepared in advance as a pretext to declare martial law in Ukraine, which was announced after the incident and lasted for a month. Putin said the provocation could be linked to Ukrainian leader Petro Poroshenko's low approval ratings before the presidential election.
In early April, US Ambassador to NATO Kay Bailey Hutchison said that the United States had been working on a package of measures to assure that there was safe passage for Ukrainian vessels through the Kerch Strait. The Russian Foreign Ministry then said that NATO was pushing Kiev to organize provocations in the Black Sea.
