And right on queue from the same article backing up the Foreign Minister's statement- "Ursula von der Leyen, Germany's defence minister, appeared to blame Moscow for breaching a 2003 agreement with Kiev that is supposed to allow for free shipping in the area."
Merkel, not Tymoshenko is the one working overtime to smooth things out and not let Ukraine get out of hand. If Moscow had to agree to free shipping, the Kerch Strait is in Russian territorial waters. Russian land is on either side of the Kerch strait since Crimea held a referendum to rejoin Russia in 2014.
LNR Deputy FM Soroka- We don't think that this (Ukrainian Martial Law) will affect Minsk in any way. All meetings within the framework of the Minsk process are still scheduled. Nobody mentioned any changes. Indeed, we must look at the reaction of Moscow, but again, except for notes and indignation at international venues, nothing will happen.
There are a few good reasons for Poroshenko to declare Martial law that have as much or more merit than him postponing or winning the 2019 Ukrainian presidential election by default.
Poroshenko timed both the Kerch incident and Martial law declarations right ahead of the G-20 summit to drum up support for Ukraine and get the international community in line against Moscow.
This might give him a little room back in Ukraine to complete his political triad of Army-Language-Faith. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church split with the Moscow Patriarchate was supposed to be the crown of his political life. Not every political leader can split Christianity successfully in his own lifetime.
And clearly, Petr Poroshenko is finding that out the hard way. When Poroshenko called a meeting of the bishops who would vote on autocephaly, only two out of more than eighty showed up. He's found out that very few Orthodox leaders favor the idea.
Martial law gives Poroshenko the legal cover to suppress the areas where dissident Orthodox officials are and possibly still pass his Kiev patriarchate breakaway church through some semblance of a Church Sobor (Congress).
And last but never least, there is a new "cold Maidan" forming. There's no heat and people are freezing. There's no work and people are starving. They can't pay their bills or buy medications. Instead of rebuilding the economic base needed to take the country out of abject poverty, Ukraine prosecutes a war with a former region. Instead of trying to keep agreements it signed which would reintegrate Donbass peacefully.
According to leading Ukrainian political scientist Mikhail Pogrebinsky, 75-80% of the population think Ukraine is going in the wrong direction. If this is the case, how do the Ukrainians have any credibility internationally?
The International community has a responsibility to oversee the tax dollars it gave Ukraine for reform that has been continually wasted. The EU has a responsibility to its own people not to exasperate the humanitarian situation it created in Ukraine that will end up flooding Europe with hopeless west and central Ukrainians.
Ukraine must be held to the same standard of law every other government is held instead of being given a free pass every time Ukraine or its nationalists go on a crime spree.
Just because "It (Ukraine's nationalist government) was intellectually decapitated (according to Zbigniew Brzezinski and Ashton B. Carter), as a matter of deliberate policy during the Stalin years and beyond so that the most able and energetic Ukrainians were either killed or magnetically attracted to Moscow and Russified" doesn't give Ukraine a free pass to relive their grandparents crimes or start regional wars in a 2018 world.
By George & Olga Eliason
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