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The Azov Sea, at the center of an escalation between Russia and Ukraine, is a small crucial sea for grain and steel exports produced in the country. East of Ukraine, connected to the Black Sea by the Kerch Strait. [19659002] The shallowest sea in the world
With a maximum depth of 14 meters, the sea of Azov is the shallowest sea in the world, with a rich fauna comprising 300 varieties of invertebrates and about 80 varieties of fish, including sardines and anchovies.
It also contains gas deposits and is an important gateway for the transportation of goods and pbadengers.
Between Crimea and Donbbad
Of an area of 37,600 km2, it is surrounded to the north and west by Ukraine, to the southwest by Crimea, annexed by Moscow in 2014 and east by Russia.
The shallow waters of the Azov Sea also bathe southern Donbbad, a Ukrainian region where armed conflict with pro-Russian separatists has claimed more than 10,000 deaths in four years. In fact, the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic controls a few kilometers of its coastline.
Obstacles to Navigation
Russia claims control of waters off the Crimea since the annexation of the peninsula in 2014. Kiev and Western countries accuse Moscow of having deliberately "prevented" navigation. merchant ships crossing the Kerch Strait.
In 2003, the Russian and Ukrainian presidents of the time, Vladimir Putin and Leonid Kuchma, concluded an agreement providing for "joint management" of the Azov Sea and the Kerch Strait, considered as "Inland waters of Ukraine and Russia".
However, this document did not regulate the delimitation of the maritime boundary between the two countries, referring to other agreements. In 2006, Moscow accused Kiev of challenging the agreements.
Controversial Bridge
Tensions were revived in 2016 with the construction by Moscow of a controversial 19-kilometer bridge over the Kerch Strait to connect the annexed Crimea to Russia. The structure was inaugurated by Vladimir Putin himself driving a truck in May 2018.
Already in 2017, the installation of his arches had "closed the way for some of the ships , too big to pbad under ", according to Oleksander Oliïnyk, director of the port of Mariupol.
This year, Russian border guards began officially arresting ships for checks, provoking demonstrations. , the port of Mariupol (about 500,000 inhabitants in 2015) was, before the war, one of the largest ports of Ukraine and a major spa destination, where families would fetch their shallow waters.
Since the beginning of Russian controls imposed on ships, the port's business, key to Ukrainian exports, is partly paralyzed.
The first seven months of the year, revenues According to Ukrainian media, the ports of Mariupol and Berdyansk, the other Ukrainian sea port of Azov, fell nearly one quarter over the same period in 2017.
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