KIEV (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 02nd June, 2019) The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry has sent requests to its partner countries, demanding that they exert pressure on Russia so that it abides by the ruling of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) on the Kerch Strait incident, outgoing Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin said.
On May 25, the Hamburg-based ITLOS demanded that Russia release the 24 sailors who were on board the three Ukrainian vessels intercepted by the Russian coast guard in the Kerch Strait in November upon illegally crossing the Russian maritime border. At the same time, the tribunal noted that it did not demand that the criminal prosecution of the sailors be terminated.
"We have sent an appeal to all foreign ministers of friendly and partner countries with a request and demand to pressure Russia to implement the decision of the international tribunal in Hamburg. [We] must do all we can politically and through national maritime administrations [to this end]," Klimkin wrote on Twitter late on Saturday.
Russia did not take part in the ITLOS hearings, arguing that this tribunal does not have jurisdiction to review Ukraine's claims around its naval ships. The Russian Foreign Ministry has also said that statements made by both Russia and Ukraine, when signing and ratifying the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, rule out the possibility of using the convention's dispute resolution procedures regarding the incident.
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 has characterized the incident as a provocation prepared in advance as a pretext to declare martial law in Ukraine, which the country did for a period of one month. Putin has speculated that the provocation might have been linked to then-Ukrainian leader Petro Poroshenko's low approval ratings before the presidential election, which his rival, Volodymyr Zelenskyy ultimately won.
