The International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) demands that Russia releases the Ukrainian warships and sailors detained in the Kerch Strait for violating the Russian border, the tribunal's President Paik Jin-Hyun said on Saturday
HAMBURG (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 25th May, 2019) The International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) demands that Russia releases the Ukrainian warships and sailors detained in the Kerch Strait for violating the Russian border, the tribunal's President Paik Jin-Hyun said on Saturday.
However, the tribunal noted that it did not demand to cancel criminal prosecution of 24 detained sailors.
Earlier, the Russian side informed the ITLOS that it would not take part in the hearings, since this tribunal did not have jurisdiction to consider Ukraine's in connection with the Kerch Strait incident.
On November 25, 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.
Moscow has repeatedly slammed Kiev's attempts to portray the detained sailors as prisoners of war, stressing that they faced criminal charges. 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 might have been linked to former Ukrainian leader Petro Poroshenko's low approval ratings before the presidential election, which his rival Volodymyr Zelensky ultimately won.
