Ukrainian naval sailor Vasyl Soroka, who has been injured during the military incident in the Kerch Strait, underwent a surgery on March 18, Verkhovna Rada Human Rights Commissioner Liudmyla Denisova said on March 19, citing her Russian counterpart Tatyana Moskalkova’s statement.
Moskalkova confirmed that Soroka “has undergone a surgery at the Pirogov City Clinical Hospital in Moscow,” the Ukrainian ombudswoman said. “Doctors have removed some fragments [of a shell] and stitched up tendons of the left hand,” Denisova wrote on Facebook.
Soroka is being held at the Lefortovo remand prison in Moscow, where doctors will monitor his health and he will undergo necessary medical procedures, she said.
On Nov. 25, 2018, Russian border guards used weapons to stop three Ukrainian naval vessels, the Yany Kapu tug and the Berdiansk and the Nikopol armored gunboats, which were traveling from Odesa to Mariupol in the Kerch Strait. The vessels were escorted to Kerch.
Kyiv called the border guards’ actions unlawful and accused Moscow of violating the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and a treaty between Ukraine and Russia on cooperation in using the Sea of Azov and the Kerch Strait.
Courts in Simferopol and Kerch remanded 22 sailors and two Ukrainian Security Service officials in custody. In late November they were transferred to Moscow.
