Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, second from right, speak with soldiers during a military training at a military base in Chernihiv region, Ukraine, Wednesday, Nov, 28, 2018. Russia and Ukraine traded blame after Russian border guards on Sunday opened fire on three Ukrainian navy vessels and eventually seized them and their crews. The incident put the two countries on war footing and raised international concern. (Mykola Lazarenko, Presidential Press Service via AP) (Mykola Lazarenko)</s>KIEV, Ukraine (AP) — The Latest on raised tensions between Russia and Ukraine (all times local):

NATO says it already has a strong presence in the Black Sea region, after Ukraine President Petro Poroshenko urged members of the military alliance like Germany to send warships amid tensions with Russia.

Spokeswoman Oana Lungescu said Thursday that NATO ships routinely patrol and exercise in the Black Sea, noting that NATO ships have spent 120 days there this year compared to 80 in 2017.

She said several NATO allies conduct air policing and reconnaissance flights in the region, and that members Bulgaria, Romania, and Turkey border the Black Sea and have their own military equipment deployed.

Lungescu said “there is already a lot of NATO in the Black Sea, and we will continue to assess our presence in the region.”

German Chancellor Angela Merkel says she plans to press Russian President Vladimir Putin at this weekend’s G-20 summit in Argentina about his country’s seizure of three Ukrainian ships and their crews.

Merkel told a Ukrainian business summit in Berlin on Thursday that Germany is urging the release of the ships and crews and that she would confront Putin at the summit.

She says “we can only resolve this in talks with one another because there is no military solution to all of these conflicts.”

Merkel says that beyond Ukraine, Russia has been aggressive in several other nations creating “a belt of countries that cannot develop in the way they want and we can’t, as Germans, close our eyes to that.”

The Kremlin has sharply criticized the Ukrainian president’s plea for NATO to deploy naval ships to the Sea of Azov amid a standoff with Russia.

President Petro Poroshenko made the call in an interview with the German daily Bild published Thursday, hoping that NATO countries “are now ready to relocate naval ships to the Sea of Azov in order to assist Ukraine and provide security.”

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Poroshenko’s request is “clearly aimed at provoking further tensions” and driven by the Ukrainian leader’s “electoral and domestic policy motives.”

In Sunday’s confrontation, Russian ships fired on and seized three Ukrainian vessels and their crews trying to pass into the Sea of Azov through the Kerch Strait between Russia’s mainland and Crimea, which it annexed from Ukraine.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan says he has discussed the possibility of a Turkish mediation to resolve tensions between Russia and Ukraine in the Sea of Azov.

Erdogan made the comments early Thursday, hours after he held separate telephone conversations with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko.

The Turkish leader said: “Can we assume a mediator role? We discussed this subject with both sides.”

Erdogan said he would hold more talks concerning the standoff with both Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump on the sidelines of the G-20 summit meeting in Buenos Aires.

Tensions between Russia and Ukraine flared on Sunday, when Russian border guards fired on three Ukrainian vessels and seized the ships and the crew.

The Ukrainian president is urging NATO to deploy naval ships to the Sea of Azov amid a standoff with Russia.

President Petro Poroshenko made the call in an interview with the German daily Bild published Thursday, saying that “we hope that states within NATO are now ready to relocate naval ships to the Sea of Azov in order to assist Ukraine and provide security.”

In Sunday’s confrontation, the Russian coast guard fired on and seized three Ukrainian vessels that sought to pass from the Black Sea into the Sea of Azov through the Kerch Strait, between Russia’s mainland and the Crimean Peninsula it annexed from Ukraine.

Ukraine insisted that its vessels were operating in line with international maritime rules, while Russia said they had failed to get permission to pass.</s>BRUSSELS, Nov 28 (Reuters) - The European Union's hawks have called for more sanctions on Russia after a fresh flare-up of tensions with Ukraine but the divided bloc is not going to act swiftly, if at all, diplomatic sources said.

A sign of their long-standing divisions on how to handle President Vladimir Putin's Russia, the 28 EU states were still struggling on Wednesday to agree a joint statement, three days after Russia seized Ukrainian navy vessels and sailors.

The three former Soviet republics sitting on the Baltic Sea coast, backed by Poland and Britain, want tough language on more sanctions looming.

Several senior European politicians raised the prospect on Tuesday and U.S. President Donald Trump said he might cancel a meeting with Putin later this week over the maritime clash he described as "aggression".

But the bloc's top powers Germany and France have so far put emphasis on seeking to calm tensions.

"We are not going to move very quickly on any new sanctions, there could be some later on, that is not ruled out. But for now the unity of the 28 is key. And focus on de-escalation," one EU diplomat said.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel spoke to Putin and Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko on Tuesday. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was in France.

"There is a lot of contacts going on. Let's see where they take us. I doubt we will rush on sanctions too much," another EU diplomat also said.

Countries including Italy, Greece, Bulgaria and Cyprus have long called for a softer stance vis-à-vis Moscow, saying the bloc's existing economic sanctions over Russia's role in the turmoil in Ukraine hurt EU businesses too.

The bloc first imposed sanctions after Russia annexed the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea from Kiev in 2014. Brussels tightened the measures as Moscow went on to back rebels fighting against government troops in east Ukraine.

EU leaders are expected to decide to roll the economic sanctions over for another year when they meet in Brussels in December. They could also look at any new punitive measures then after a discussion among their foreign ministers on Dec.10.

"In order to discuss sanctions, we'd need to have a clearer picture of what happened," another EU source said, highlighting unease in some EU quarters that Poroshenko could also stand to gain from the situation.

Putin on Wednesday accused Poroshenko of orchestrating a "provocation" in the sea to boost his flagging popularity ratings before an election next year.

Following the incident, Ukraine introduced martial law in parts of the country it says are vulnerable to Russian attack. The European Commission has said it received "important" assurances from Poroshenko that this would not interfere with democratic processes or restrict citizens rights.

If the 28 EU member states fail to agree the wording of a joint statement, the bloc is likely to put out a less strongly worded statement in the name of its top diplomat, Federica Mogherini, on Wednesday.

It would call on Russia to free the Ukrainian vessels and sailors as well as ensure unrestricted sea access. It would urge both sides to show restraint and express support for Ukraine's territorial integrity and sovereignty, diplomatic sources said.

EU diplomats said the latest escalation weakens the hand of Russia doves in the bloc. While the EU would not necessarily create new sanctions, it can add new names to its existing blacklists, including some Russian military personnel, the sources said.

The U.S. State Department called on the EU on Tuesday to do more to help Ukraine in its struggle with Russia, including through tougher enforcement of existing sanctions and dropping support for the Nord Stream 2 pipeline with Moscow.

Washington, which under Trump has promoted more exports of its own natural gas that competes with Russia, has long lobbied the EU against the construction of another pipeline that would deepen the bloc's dependence on Russian gas deliveries.

The U.S. government has threatened to sanction those involved in the project but Germany - the final destination of the pipeline and the project's co-author with Russia - said it was sticking to it. (Reporting by Gabriela Baczynska Editing by Peter Graff)</s>Russia's weekend maritime clash with Ukraine illustrated the vast military imbalance between the neighbors.

No fewer than 11 Russian vessels surrounded Ukraine's two light military ships and one tugboat, ramming them before eventually opening fire on Sunday, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko told NBC News.

Poroshenko insists his country is under "extremely serious" threat of a land invasion, and that's why he had to declare martial law for 30 days in regions adjacent to Russia.

The gulf in military might was further driven home when Russia announced Wednesday it would deploy another of its S-400 surface-to-air missile systems to Crimea, the peninsula it annexed from Ukraine in 2014. The S-400 can track 300 targets simultaneously including aircraft, drones and other missiles mid-flight, and has a range of 250 miles. It will be the fourth S-400 in Crimea.

According to Poroshenko, Russia also tripled the number of tanks at a base near the Ukrainian border from September to October.

"We are now strengthening our defense on all the borders with Russia," Poroshenko told NBC News' Richard Engel on Tuesday.

The U.S. currently has around 200 soldiers stationed as advisers in Ukraine.

Ukraine says that Russia is attempting to take control of the Sea of Azov. The annexation of Crimea gave it control of the Azov’s only entrance, the Kerch Strait, choking access to Ukraine’s own ports.

In May, Russia opened a $3.69 billion bridge across the strait, and Ukraine says Sunday’s clashes were evidence the Kremlin is further tightening its grip.

Kiev is concerned about how to protect a 180-mile stretch between Crimea and the eastern part of Ukraine that's already run by Russian-backed separatists.

Most of Ukraine's navy was based in Crimea when it was annexed, meaning the military lost around 80 percent of its fleet to capture or defections. Russian President Vladimir Putin has offered to give the vessels back, although he described what is left as being a "wreck."

Since 2014, fighting in eastern Ukraine has claimed more than 10,000 lives. In 2015, the rebels briefly stormed the port city of Mariupol. Poroshenko says he believes they might try again.

"I have a document of intelligence in my hands," he said Monday, explaining his decision to impose martial law. He said the files contained a "detailed description of all the forces of the enemy located at a distance of literally several dozens of kilometers from our border, ready at any moment for an immediate invasion of Ukraine."

"It is very unlikely that the rebels would attempt to mount a land assault and try to push the boundaries of the conflict further into Ukraine," says Emily Ferris, a research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies, a London think tank.

Ferris points out that if anything Moscow has been attempting to politically disengage from the conflict in the east of the country, with its domestic media focusing on the country's role in Syria.

In December 2017, Moscow withdrew from an organization that oversees the often-violated ceasefire in Ukraine, likely an attempt to persuade Ukraine to deal directly with separatists, Ferris added.

"We would have to consider what Russia could gain from this," she said referring to a land assault.

Some fear the Ukrainian president is using the crisis to weaken democracy as he trails badly in the polls ahead of an election in March.

However, given the disparity between Ukraine's forces and Putin's military next door, many are alarmed by the prospect of conflict between the former members of the Soviet Union.

Ihor Kabanenko, a retired admiral with the Ukrainian navy, has for months been predicting a flare-up along the lines of the Sunday's incident.

In August, he told NBC News that "Moscow will use Ukrainian maritime vulnerability and its own maritime supremacy at the Sea of Azov to achieve this goal."

In September, the United States gave Ukraine two Island-class patrol boats, outdated vessels built for the U.S. Coast Guard in the 1980s and 1990s.

These will form part of a new so-called "Mosquito Fleet" of light vessels that Ukraine is trying to assemble

But it is no match for Russia, whose Black Sea Fleet is station in Crimea and has received a "large number" of new ships and submarines since 2014, according to the War on the Rocks website.

The boats that detained Ukraine's ships on Sunday were part of Russia's FSB security service.

Compare that with Ukraine. In October, the BBC spent time aboard one of Ukraine's remaining vessels: a small, slow fishing boat with a gun bolted to the back.</s>Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, second from right, speak with soldiers during a military training at a military base in Chernihiv region, Ukraine, Wednesday, Nov, 28, 2018. Russia and Ukraine traded blame after Russian border guards on Sunday opened fire on three Ukrainian navy vessels and eventually seized them and their crews. The incident put the two countries on war footing and raised international concern. (Mykola Lazarenko, Presidential Press Service via AP) (Mykola Lazarenko)</s>Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, second from right, speak with soldiers during a military training at a military base in Chernihiv region, Ukraine, Wednesday, Nov, 28, 2018. Russia and Ukraine traded blame after Russian border guards on Sunday opened fire on three Ukrainian navy vessels and eventually seized them and their crews. The incident put the two countries on war footing and raised international concern. (Mykola Lazarenko, Presidential Press Service via AP) (AP)</s>Action by NATO could further inflame tensions between the two countries

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, second from right, speak with soldiers during a military training at a military base in Chernihiv region, Ukraine, Wednesday, Nov, 28, 2018. Russia and Ukraine traded blame after Russian border guards on Sunday opened fire on three Ukrainian navy vessels and eventually seized them and their crews. The incident put the two countries on war footing and raised international concern. (Mykola Lazarenko, Presidential Press Service via AP)

The Ukrainian president has urged NATO to deploy naval ships to the Sea of Azov, a proposal that has been sharply criticized by Russia as a provocation that could further inflame tensions between the two countries.

In an interview in the German daily Bild, published Thursday, President Petro Poroshenko laid out his hope that NATO would “relocate naval ships to the Sea of Azov in order to assist Ukraine and provide security” against the expansionist ambitions of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

His call follows the weekend incident in which the Russian coast guard fired on and seized three Ukrainian vessels and their crews. Russia charged that the Ukrainian vessels had failed to obtain permission to pass from the Black Sea into the Sea of Azov through the Kerch Strait between Russia’s mainland and the Crimean Peninsula it annexed from Ukraine in 2014. Ukraine insisted that its vessels were operating in line with international maritime rules.

“Putin wants nothing less but to occupy the sea,” Poroshenko said. “The only language he understands is the unity of the Western world.”

Putin, for his part, criticized the West for what he described as connivance with Ukraine’s “provocation.”

“The authorities in Kyiv are successfully selling anti-Russian sentiments as they have nothing else left to sell,” he said. “They can get away with whatever they do. If they want to eat babies for breakfast today, they will likely serve them too.”

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she plans to press Russian President Vladimir Putin at this weekend’s G-20 summit in Argentina to urge the release of the ships and crews.

“We can only resolve this in talks with one another because there is no military solution to all of these conflicts,” she said.

NATO said that it already has a strong presence in the Black Sea region. The alliance’s spokeswoman Oana Lungescu said NATO ships routinely patrol and exercise in the Black Sea, and that they have spent 120 days there this year compared to 80 in 2017.

She noted that several NATO allies conduct air policing and reconnaissance flights in the region, adding that members Bulgaria, Romania, and Turkey border the Black Sea and have their own military equipment deployed.

“There is already a lot of NATO in the Black Sea, and we will continue to assess our presence in the region,” Lungescu said.

While NATO condemned the Russian action, the alliance is not expected to send ships into the Sea of Azov, a deployment that could trigger a confrontation with Russia. A 2003 treaty between Russia and Ukraine stipulates that permission from both countries is required for warships from others to enter the internal sea.

In response to Sunday’s events, Poroshenko has imposed martial law in much of the country, a move that won parliamentary backing. Putin accused his Ukrainian counterpart of provoking the naval incident in a bid to impose martial law to shore up his sagging popularity and sideline competitors ahead of March’s presidential election.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Poroshenko’s request for NATO to send warships into the Sea of Azov is “clearly aimed at provoking further tensions,” adding that it was driven by the Ukrainian leader’s “electoral and domestic policy motives.”

Ukraine has released what it said was the exact location where its ships were fired on by Russia, saying they were in international waters west of the Kerch Strait. Russia, meanwhile, insisted the Ukrainian vessels were in its territorial waters and refused to communicate with the Russian coast guard, or accept a Russian pilot to guide them through the narrow strait.

“What were the border guards supposed to do?” Putin said Wednesday. “They fulfilled their duty to protect the territorial integrity of the Russian Federation. If they had done something differently, they should have been put on trial for that.”

Ukraine and Russia have been in a tug-of-war since Moscow’s annexation of the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine in 2014. Russia has also supported separatists in Ukraine’s east with clandestine dispatches of troops and weapons. The fighting there has killed at least 10,000 people since 2014 but eased somewhat after a 2015 truce.

The naval incident marked the first overt collision between Russian and Ukrainian militaries since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union. It has fueled fears of a wider conflict and has drawn strong criticism of Russia from the U.S. and its allies.

Amid the tensions, the Russian military said it had deployed another batch of the long-range, S-400 air defence missile systems to Crimea.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he discussed the possibility of a Turkish mediation to resolve tensions and held separate telephone conversations with Putin and Poroshenko on Thursday.

Asked about the Turkish offer, Peskov responded that “Moscow is grateful to all those willing to help de-escalate the tensions provoked by the Ukrainian side, but doesn’t see any need for mediation efforts.”

“Those who have such opportunities could help by exerting influence on the Ukrainian authorities,” Peskov said.

Yuras Karmanau And Vladimir Isachenkov, The Associated Press

Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.</s>Kiev asks for western presence in sea it shares with Russia, saying Putin is blocking ports

The Ukrainian president, Petro Poroshenko, has called on Nato to deploy naval ships to the Sea of Azov to “provide security” amid a deepening crisis with Russia.

Nato foreign ministers are due to meet next Monday in Brussels and will assess their existing presence in the area, but it is unlikely they will send warships to the area.

The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, insisted there was no military solution, even after describing Moscow’s actions as unacceptable. She said she would be talking directly to the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, at the G20 summit in Argentina, which starts on Friday.

This week’s renewed crisis in Russian-European relations erupted after Moscow seized three Ukrainian naval ships and their crews on Sunday in waters off Russian-annexed Crimea.

The ships were trying to make their way through the Kerch strait to the Ukrainian port of Mariupol in the Sea of Azov. Ukraine said Russia used a tanker to block access to the Kerch strait, which under a treaty is shared territory. Russia said the vessels illegally entered its waters.

On Thursday Donald Trump abruptly cancelled his own planned G20 meeting with Putin, blaming Russia’s failure to return the seized ships and sailors.

Play Video 1:16 Russia seizes Ukrainian naval ships in major escalation of tensions – video

The Crimean courts have put 24 Ukrainian sailors under two-month pre-trial detention. Some of the sailors have been flown to Moscow, two of their lawyers told AFP on Thursday.

Ukraine claimed Russia was escalating the crisis by imposing a de facto blockade on two Ukrainian ports on the Sea of Azov and barring ships from leaving and entering via the Russian-controlled Kerch strait.

Russia has blocked 35 merchant ships from leaving or entering the Sea of Azov, Ukraine asserted. The infrastructure ministry said on Thursday 18 ships were stuck in the Black Sea, waiting to pass through the Kerch strait into the Sea of Azov, and another 17 vessels were unable to sail out of the Ukrainian ports of Mariupol and Berdyansk.

Kerch strait confrontation: what happened and why does it matter? Read more

The Kremlin denied it was restricting shipping and said if there was any blockage it was because of bad weather.

In his most fiery rhetoric of the crisis, Poroshenko accused Putin of wanting to annex Ukraine, telling the German newspaper Bild on Thursday: “Don’t believe Putin’s lies. Putin wants the old Russian empire back. Crimea, Donbass, the whole country.” Likening Putin to a Russian tsar, he said: “He believes his empire cannot function without Ukraine – he sees us as his colony.”

He called on Germany to increase existing economic sanctions against Russia and again urged Berlin to rethink its plans to allow Russia to build a new gas pipeline, Nord Stream 2, which he said would leave the EU even more dependent on Russian energy and deprive Ukraine of badly needed income derived from its existing pipeline.

Merkel said the pipeline would go ahead, adding Germany would “ensure Ukraine remains an important transit country”.

Speaking at a Ukrainian business forum in Berlin, she said: “We must do everything to help places like Mariupol …We can’t allow this city to just be cut off, thus indirectly isolating further parts of Ukraine.

“The Ukrainian side has asked us to act wisely ... there is no military solution to these problems, we have to emphasise that.”

In a tweet sent en route to the G20 summit, Trump said: “Based on the fact that the ships and sailors have not been returned to Ukraine from Russia, I have decided it would be best for all parties concerned to cancel my previously scheduled meeting … I look forward to a meaningful Summit again as soon as this situation is resolved!” .

Russia claims the Ukrainian vessels ignored “the legitimate demands of the coastguard of the border service and the Black Sea fleet to immediately halt, and end performing dangerous manoeuvres”. It says a chase involving some gunfire ensued in order to stop the Ukrainian ships, which were detained in Russian territorial waters.



The Ukrainian authorities have introduced martial law in selected regions along the border with Russia as well as along the coast of the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov for 30 days. It includes an order that only Ukrainians can enter the country. Poroshenko also tweeted on Thursday that he would impose unspecified restrictions on Russian citizens in his country and spoke of banning some foreign currency and banking operations in Ukraine.

Putin and Poroshenko motives open to question in Kerch crisis | Simon Tisdall Read more

The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, offered to play a mediator role between Ukraine and Russia alongside Merkel. He has held phone talks with leaders on both sides, and said he would continue discussing the issue with Putin and Trump at the G20 summit.

Kiev has called for Russian vessels to be banned from passing through the Bosphorus strait in Turkey as a reprisal for the Kerch strait standoff.

Merkel put the crisis in a wider context of Russian interference in eastern Europe, accusing Russia of creating instability not only in eastern Ukraine, but also in Georgia, Moldova, Azerbaijan and Armenia. “There is a belt of countries that cannot develop as they want. In the face of this, we cannot close our eyes as Germans.”</s>BERLIN (Reuters) - Ukraine President Petro Poroshenko accused Russia’s Vladimir Putin of seeking to annex his entire country and called in interviews with German media for Chancellor Angela Merkel to come to Kiev’s aid in the crisis.

Russia seized three Ukrainian navy ships and their crews on Sunday near the Crimean peninsula, which Moscow annexed in 2014, over what it said was their illegal entry into Russian waters - a charge Ukraine strongly refutes.

In interviews with Germany’s Bild newspaper and the Funke newspaper group on Thursday, Poroshenko rejected Russia’s charge that the vessels’ entry into the Azov Sea - a body of water shared by Ukraine and Russia on which the Ukrainian ports of Mariupol and Berdyansk sit - was a provocation.

“Don’t believe Putin’s lies,” he told Bild, Germany’s biggest-selling paper, comparing Russia’s protestations of innocence in the affair to Moscow’s 2014 denial that it had soldiers in Crimea even as they moved to annex it.

“Putin wants the old Russian empire back,” he said. “Crimea, Donbass, the whole country. As Russian Tsar, as he sees himself, his empire can’t function without Ukraine. He sees us as his colony.”

The seizure of the navy vessels drove tensions to their highest since 2015, when Moscow-backed rebels rose against the Kiev government in the eastern Donbass region, sparking a war that has killed tens of thousands.

Poroshenko called on Germany, the largest and wealthiest buyer of Moscow’s gas exports, to halt the building of an undersea gas pipeline that would allow Russia to supply Germany directly, cutting out Ukraine.

“We need a strong, resolute and clear reaction to Russia’s aggressive behavior,” he told Funke. “That also means stopping the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project.”

Germany regards the pipeline, which is being built by Russian state-owned energy company Gazprom, as a private investment. But Merkel recently acknowledged its “political dimensions” and said Ukraine must continue to be a conduit for Russian gas sold to western Europe.

German officials said on Wednesday that their position on the pipeline remained unchanged and that talk of tighter sanctions against Moscow, demanded by the United States and many European politicians, was “premature”.

Poroshenko also called for the stationing of NATO vessels in the Sea of Azov.</s>Twenty five years ago, Ukraine was the world's third-largest nuclear power, with more warheads than the United Kingdom, France and China combined.

The government in Kiev inherited this arsenal after the breakup of the Soviet Union, finding itself in possession of an estimated 5,000 nuclear weapons, more than 170 intercontinental ballistic missiles and several dozen nuclear bombers.

In 1994, Ukraine agreed to dismantle this stockpile in return for a promise from Russia that the country wouldn't be attacked.

But after Russian forces fired at and seized three Ukrainian naval vessels on Sunday, Kiev has pointed to this deal and suggested that the U.S. and Europe should do more to protect it against the vastly superior Russian military.

For months Ukraine has accused Russia of restricting access to its own ports in the nearby Sea of Azov, alleging the Kremlin wants to turn it into a Russian lake.

But the attack on the vessels and detention of their crews brought the relationship between the neighbors to a new low. Ukraine says the incident occurred in international waters.

Ukraine insists Moscow is again blockading the sea, something Moscow denies. Russia says it merely needs to inspect all ships passing through as a security measure to protect a $3.6 billion bridge it's built across the Kerch Strait from its mainland to Crimea, which it annexed in 2014.

It’s against this backdrop that Ukraine has invoked the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances, which was signed in 1994 by Ukraine, Russia, the U.S. and U.K.

"Ukraine gave up the third-largest nuclear arsenal" in the world, Ukrainian lawyer and human rights activist Stanislav Batryn told UkrLifeTV this week. "Today Russia violated the territorial integrity of Ukraine and is in fact starting a Third World War."

After declaring independence in 1991, Ukraine found itself with thousands of Soviet nuclear weapons that were still controlled by Russian systems.

The U.S. was extremely worried about the potential emergence of another nuclear power with ICBMs designed to target the U.S. and its allies. So Washington brokered the agreement and paid half a billion dollars for Ukraine to pass these weapons to Russia to be dismantled.

In return, Russia, the U.S. and the U.K. agreed to "refrain from the threat or use of force" against Ukraine and to respect its "independence and sovereignty and the existing borders." Belarus and Kazakhstan also gave up their smaller stockpiles in exchange for the same promises.

When Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, it was widely accepted that this agreement had been violated. After this week's clash on the Black Sea, Ukraine used the memorandum as a rallying cry.

"We are appealing the entire pro-Ukrainian world coalition — we have to join our efforts," Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said Monday. "We are appealing to our partners in Budapest Memorandum that took on obligations to defend the sovereignty and territorial integrity."

Russian President Vladimir Putin's explanation in 2014 was that the memorandum had been agreed with a previous Ukrainian government, so was no longer valid. Most observers dismissed this as ridiculous; if agreements expired with the governments that signed them, then countless important treaties throughout history would be now void.

In 2016, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov offered another explanation, claiming that the agreement only stipulated its signatories "won’t use nuclear weapons against Ukraine" — which is not true.

However, some have expressed concern that Poroshenko could be using the Azov crisis to weaken democracy as he trails badly in the polls ahead of elections slated for March.

As well as invoking the Budapest Memorandum, he has also declared martial law, neither of which he did even at the height of the country’s crisis in 2014.

The problem is that the Budapest Memorandum is a political agreement rather than a legally binding treaty. It does not say countries have to take any particular action if it is violated, other than enter into talks.

The U.S. says it remains committed to the agreement, and has provided more than $2.8 billion since 2014 to help Ukraine "defend its territory and implement key reforms."

Some 200 U.S. troops are stationed at a base in western Ukraine, albeit hundreds of miles from Crimea or fighting in the east. And earlier this year the Trump administration sold Ukraine Javelin anti-tank guided missiles worth an estimated $47 million.

But Poroshenko told NBC News this week that what he really wants — "what we were promised" — is Washington's help to join NATO.

This would in theory give his country the alliance's Article 5 mutual-defense protection: an assurance that the U.S. and others would come to its aid in an attack.

In September, Ukraine hosted NATO military exercises involving some 2,270 troops from 14 countries including the U.S.

However, analysts say there is little chance of Ukraine gaining NATO membership while the status of Crimea remains unresolved and conflict simmers in the east.

The Ukrainian president was seemingly snubbed again this week when he called on NATO to send its ships into the Azov and called on Germany to halt construction of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which is being built under the Baltic Sea and bypasses Ukraine.

Both NATO and Germany appear to have declined these overtures.

Just because they haven't gone to war over the issue, that doesn't mean Western countries have ignored the Budapest Memorandum, according to Jack Watling, a research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute.

"Policymakers haven't forgotten," he said, "but given that they've ruled out the most direct way of fulfilling that obligation, they are trying to use other tools in their arsenal: diplomatic, economic."

These tools include the raft of sanctions slapped on Russia by the U.S. and European Union since the Crimea annexation.

"There's no way of making this a limited war like the Falklands," Watling added, referencing Britain's war with Argentina in 1982. "It would be World War III and the risk of nuclear escalation is unacceptable. We're not prepared to take that risk over Crimea."
Ukraine's Infrastructure Minister Volodymyr Omelyan says the ports of Berdiansk and Mariupol are effectively under blockade as Russia refuses to let any Ukrainian vessels leave or enter the Sea of Azov. President Petro Poroshenko calls on NATO to send warships to patrol the Sea of Azov.