Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko will award state decorations to Ukrainian sailors who were detained by Russian border guards in the Kerch Strait on Nov. 25, 2018 and later arrested by a Russian court.
“Based on the courage and heroism of these Ukrainian navy sailors, prisoners of war, displayed in the performance of military duties, I have decided to award the Ukrainian servicemen today held captive in the Russian Federation,” Poroshenko said at a meeting with the sailors’ relatives in Odesa on April 5.
The Ukrainian navy sailors acted as “true knights, true worriers, true patriots and true professionals,” he said.
The prisoners’ relatives accepted the awards from Poroshenko on their behalf.
Poroshenko expressed hope that they would be released and return home soon.
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.
The Federal Security Service (FSB) said the ships had entered Russia’s territorial waters on orders from Kyiv and described the incident as an act of provocation coordinated by two Ukrainian Security Service officers. Russia also said that Kyiv had not duly notified it that naval vessels were planning to pass through the Kerch Strait.
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 the 22 sailors and two Ukrainian Security Service officials in custody. In late November they were transferred to Moscow.
The Ukrainians are charged with “conspiracy by a group of persons or an organized group to illegally cross the border using violence or the threat to use violence.” If found guilty, they could face up to six years in prison.
Kyiv calls the detained sailors prisoners of war.
