Authored by Jason Ditz via AntiWar.com,
Still bound and determined that the maritime incident last weekend in the Sea of Azov portends a full-scale war with Russia, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko called on all NATO nations and other allied states to start relocating warships en masse to the sea to “assist Ukraine” in a conflict.
“We cannot accept this aggressive policy of Russia. First it was Crimea, then eastern Ukraine, now he wants the Sea of Azov. Germany, too, has to ask itself: What will Putin do next if we do not stop him?”
Poroshenko singled out Germany as a nation that should rush warships to the area, saying that Germany needs to consider where Putin will strike next after taking over Ukraine. He added that he is positive Putin wants the whole country.
“Germany is one of our closest allies and we hope that states within Nato are now ready to relocate naval ships to the Sea of Azov in order to assist Ukraine and provide security,” he said.
As a practical matter, NATO nations are severely limited in the warships they could send to the area by the 1936 Montreux Convention, which severely limits the number of warships allowed to pass through the Bosporus Straits.
This means that even if Germany had a vast navy, which it doesn’t, they would not legally be able to deploy large numbers in the Black Sea or Sea of Azov, and certainly would need more than a couple of frigates to square off with the entire Russian Black Sea Fleet.
Western governments have backed the Ukrainian government.
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