 Hello and welcome to NewsClick's International Roundup. The past couple of days saw an escalation of conflict in the Crimean region with three Ukrainian vessels entering into the Sea of Azov to the Kyrgyz Straits in violation of international law. Now these boats have been stopped and the sailors have been detained by Russia. But this also points to larger attempted sparking conflict between Ukraine and Russia which have already been at logheads for the past couple of years over Crimea. To talk more about this we have with us Praveel Purkayasar, Adrian Chief of NewsClick. Hello Praveel. Praveel, so could you first start with a quick description of what exactly is the strategic intent behind the operation like this, especially at this point of time where there has not been any particular there doesn't seem to be any particular obvious reason for this. Well there are two parts to it one is what really happened and I would say that to say that it's in they would the Ukrainian vessels are doing this in violation of international law of course begs the question what is the status of Crimea which is where the whole thing starts if you accept that Crimea is a part of Russian Union then of course the Russians would say that's territorial waters or what would be called the Isthmus that controls the Kyrgyz Straits that really belongs to Russia and therefore Russia's rules or laws would apply and that would be the international law. Ukraine claims that Crimea is really a part of Ukraine and therefore it is not to be treated as Russia and therefore this is not the territorial water of Russia they also have rights over there but even if we accept the Ukrainian argument the question arises that the 2003 agreement Ukraine and Russia in which they have also agreed to a certain set of things and in this Russia is simply saying that they have some rules they're not forbidding Ukraine to go to the sea of as of what they have just simply said is if you want to go declare your purpose declare what you are going to do and have a pilot on board so that this is the intent this intention is very clear that's a peaceful visit and is to go to the port of Maripul which is a Ukrainian port on this particular location it appears that this is a provocation known which would cause a Russian response and the provocation was designed perhaps because of internal reasons Poloshenko is facing a very difficult election he's only about seven eight percent shall we say support as shown by the polls that have come out so given that he's as we all know small war is very good for ratings so that's that could be that flashpoint a tension-filled incident something which leads to a bigger shall we say confrontation not necessarily war the good for Poloshenko and he wanted immediately to declare military rule and if you have military rule obviously then you can stop a whole lot of things from happening including the elections the opposition hasn't agreed to that they have forced forced him to declare only limited martial law and not allowed the also the martial law to be extended more than 30 days so we have that issue the second part of it is the US and the NATO have been trying to talk of the Sea of Azov that we should have a military presence over there and Mario pool which is so the the Ukrainian port over there should become a naval base and this should then allow the Kersh Strait to be used for having military vessels go there to Mario pool and therefore NATO's presence essentially in the Sea of Azov now with the 2003 agreement this is not possible even the Ukrainian officials seem to have agreed that Russia is technically with this legal rights to do what it has done therefore they are more talking of the spirit of international law etc not the technically legal part of it which derived from the 2003 agreement that they have which is still extended in spite of all the hostilities with the two countries that has not been abrogated so this is the other part of it that the intention seems to be also to try and make as of a contested sea and the NATO military forces including ships to be present in the harbor but the depth of as of sea is not such that you get a major naval presence over there very minor board skin yeah so it seems to be more a provocation in your face kind of thing than anything else and in this particular case it seems to be Poroshenko trying to engineer an issue the Russian response has been on the other side also interesting to note because they are afraid that Ukraine can launch an attack on the bridge and this is a huge long bridge which ensures that Crimea cannot be isolated from Russia easily but the bridge itself is a is a shall we say soft target if that is damaged blown up anything that happens to it then of course the huge loss to Russia and this tug which was going there they they seem to have had apprehensions that this kind of vessels could be used to damage the bridge and that's the one of the reasons that they have these rules of declaration of purpose also pilot and board all of this is really to protect the Kirch bridge so this is I think the Russian reaction is to be understood that they have a genuine concern also the Crimean some of the people some of the lawmakers have talked about blowing up the bridge so it's not a simply a shall we say an idle speculation or just a rhetoric there seems to be some basis for their fear as well so this is really the immediacy of the of the conflict or the immediacy of the situation and we also have seen that Ukraine has declared martial law but it is now limited to only certain areas in Ukraine bordering Russia not across Ukraine as Poroshenko wanted so taking a step back how do we see the larger significance of Crimea in this context also because Russia and Ukraine have been having this conflict for about four years almost so how do we see it in this context well you know the Crimea peninsula is a very peculiar issue it is largely Russian speaking so it's not that there is a dispute over the nationality or the identity of the people there it in the erstwhile Soviet Union it was given to Crimea a Crimea was given to Ukraine as a gesture of integration and honestly speaking at that time they didn't think these borders were going to lead at some point to becoming international borders and Crimea was therefore given as a part of what was what emerged as the later on as a Ukrainian state but at that time really a province of the Soviet Union now Sevastopol militarily is very important for the Russian Navy because it connects the Black Sea to the Mediterranean Sea and of course the Mediterranean Sea is also the gateway to the Atlantic now if you see Russia it has one problem that most of its ports are not winter ports because they tend to freeze the seas tend to freeze navigating those winter waters becomes very difficult Sevastopol is also a port which remains open around the year so militarily Sevastopol has been extremely important for Russia and the Crimeans military importance is really also Sevastopol so therefore trying to block Sevastopol or trying to take away Crimea not make it a part of Russian Union Russian Federation all of it is really a larger game of trying to checkmate Russia's naval presence both in the Mediterranean and also in the Atlantic so therefore limit it to only summer months as it were and therefore knocking it out as a major shall we say naval player global player so that's the really the strategic significance of Crimea and that is what makes Crimean situation much more important than just a small piece of land right and if you look at the Ukrainian situation itself like you said Poroshenko is trailing in the poles he doesn't have too much support and the opposition is united against any major say possibility of military rule at the same time there seems to be a lot of support from your sector the line to NATO think tanks in the West calling for a renewed escalation so what is the logic behind the other kind of rhetoric right now you see one thing is that the response has been as if it's a day to ally in one of the exchanges the US spokesperson when she was talking one of the journalists asked has NATO joined in the last two three Ukraine has joined NATO in the last two three weeks it's just something that nobody knows about so this is the other issue that you know Ukraine is not a part of NATO as yet and there is a whole set of consequences which follow if Ukraine joins the NATO one of course the Minsk accord collapses because it's based on the fact that Ukraine will be neutral it's not a part of NATO the NATO powers how much they're interested in investing in Ukraine militarily is an open question because Ukraine is now being shown as a bankrupt state it is a complete kleptocracy as its political bosses said the whole set of people who are contesting for power none of them have credibility in the sense and they are making Ukraine increasingly a basket case in the in the Baltics it support has not come from the major powers if you see this current escalation apart from the Baltic countries and strangely enough Canada which seems to have a lot of you emigrate a Ukrainian population other than that no other major power seems to have supported the Ukrainian escalation they've given some lip service but they haven't really gone out on a limb and apparently Germany has told Poroshenko to stand down enough is enough you know talk talk is okay but don't escalate it further neither see it seems the United States if Trump statements on this are to be taken into consideration that they also very seriously invested in it except Nikki Haley in the United Nations Security Council United Nations Security Council and Trump says it's really European countries which have to take the lead and we will support of course there's a lot of rhetoric on that so nobody seems to be very clean on escalating this further so it does seem that this is going to be another of those shall we say incidents where there is a continuous a gig on for war with Russia and why the shall we say these people are a gig on at Latin council being one of them and various other figures why they are continuously a gig on for nature to attack Russia attack the Crimea take it away from Russia all of this measures I'm at I'm really at a loss to understand because asking for nuclear conflict on conflagration seems to be an extremely stupid strategic idea and only deranged minds or people who believe in a never-never land only they can propose you know armed conflict with new with two nuclear power between two nuclear power so I'm at a loss to understand this rhetoric which keeps on continuously asking for upping the anti and really going to virtually to war against Russia thank you that's all we have time for today keep watching