Russia Ukraine: Russian-Ukrainian war over narrow sea passage may provoke wider war

MOSCOW – The Ukrainian President put his country on a war footing with Russia on Monday as tensions around a common waterway turned into a crisis that resulted NATO and the United Nations.

Russia's seizure, one day earlier, of three small ships of the Ukrainian navy and 23 sailors – including at least three wounded in a shooting by the Russian side – was the first armed conflict declared between the two parties since the beginning of the conflict in 2014, when the Russian special forces occupied Crimea.

The opening of an additional front at sea, although Ukraine lacks a true navy, introduced an unstable element in what had been a dark war. The conflict between Ukrainian soldiers and Russian-backed separatists in the separatist region of Donbbad in eastern Ukraine has been raging for nearly five years and has claimed more than 10,000 lives.

The Kremlin, along with some Ukrainian opposition figures, have called the martial drum drums echoing since Kiev an internal political stratagem of its beleaguered president, Petro Poroshenko. They accused him of alarming fear in order to delay or at least reconfigure the March 31 election that he was certain to lose.

Poroshenko delivered a speech in front of the Ukrainian Parliament asking him to approve the martial law declaration as of Wednesday, the army is already on full alert. The attack on the Navy's ships near the common waterway, the Kerch Strait, represented a new phase of aggression in what he called Russia's "hybrid war" against Ukraine.

Members of the 450-member Verkhovna Rada, who were present in parliament, voted 276-30 to support the measure after the president agreed to dilute his reach.

Ukraine also benefited from the reaction of the international community, highlighting both the isolation of Russia and the West vis-à-vis the Ukrainian conflict, as well as the desire to protect the international maritime convention which allows unhindered navigation in any strait.

"What you saw yesterday was very serious, because you actually found that Russia was using the military force openly," NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters. a press conference in Brussels, following a meeting requested by Ukraine. "This worsens the situation in the region and confirms a behavior that we observe for several years."