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The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, in a statement issued by the Ukrainian media, opposed Ukraine in the dispute. "NATO fully supports the sovereignty of Ukraine and its territorial integrity, including its rights of navigation in its own territorial waters," said the statement published in the newspaper Ukrainska Pravda.
Photographs and videos posted online showed a Russian freighter docked in the channel of the Strait, blocking it, and fighter planes buzzing over the waterway.
According to Ukrainian officials, the strait blockade has been Russia's intention since the beginning of the year, when tension has increased about Ukrainian ships entering and exiting the Sea of Azov, which is home to major ports. coal and steel.
Earlier in the day, a Russian coastguard ship crashed into one of the Ukrainian ships, the tug, according to the Ukrainian Navy. The small Ukrainian convoy sailed from Odessa in the Black Sea to Mariupol in the Sea of Azov.
Ukrainian Parliament Speaker Iryna Gerashchenko said on Facebook that Ukraine had asked the United Nations Security Council to examine the Kerch Strait incident. "We have a direct armed aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine," she said. "Our maritime area is under attack"
Tensions in the Azov sea intensified this spring after Russia completed the construction of a bridge over the strait connecting the Crimean peninsula to mainland Russia. The Russian coastguard began to inspect Ukrainian commercial traffic in the coal and steel ports of Mariupol and Berdyansk.
Since then, according to Ukrainian officials, Russia has moved some naval vessels, including warships, from its Caspian flotilla to the Azov Sea and has inspected more than 200 foreign merchant vessels, mainly Ukrainian.
