Date: January 20, 2019
Location: Moscow, Russia
Russian court has prolonged the pretrial detention of 24 Ukrainian sailors detained by Russian forces who attacked three Ukrainian Navy vessels in the Black Sea on November 25 2018 and extended detention of Ukrainian servicemen until April 24 2019.
On November 25, Russian border vessels committed aggressive actions against three Ukrainian ships that set sail from the port of Odesa to the port of Mariupol in the Azov Sea. After that, Russian special forces opened fire on the Ukrainian tugboat Yany Kapu, small armored artillery boats Berdiansk and Nikopol in the Black Sea before entering the Kerch Strait and seized them. There were 24 sailors on board the ships, and six of them were wounded.
Russia keeps trying to present its act of war on November 25, 2018 as a criminal case about “illegal crossing of the Russian territorial waters” (in Russian parallel reality Kerch Strait has become Russian territorial waters after Russia occupied Ukrainian Crimea and built a bridge to it).
All 24 captured Ukrainian sailors stated they are prisoners of war and refused to testify in Russian court.
Credits: NewsFromUkraine
