Vladimir Putin, Toying With Tormenting Ukraine

"This is not a joke [the seizure of three Ukrainian naval vessels and 24 crew, leading to restricted shipping through the port of Mariupol]."
"It is not a Hollywood movie. It is a very serious situation [on the sea of Azov]."
Volodymyr Omelyan, Infrastructure Minister, Ukraine

"We have complete consistency on our concerns and messaging, right now we’re assessing how to get the crew and ships out; there are a variety of options for that."
"[During a North Atlantic Council meeting on Black Sea security, the United States] reiterated that we condemn this Russian act of aggression, that Crimea is Ukraine, and that the Russian action in Kerch is a clear military escalation and violation of international law and freedom of the sea."
U.S. State Department official (unnamed) 

"A city can survive even if it loses the equivalent of an arm or a leg, but this port is the heart of Mariupol."
Marina Pereshivaylova, manager, Port of Mariupol

Cranes are seen in the Azov Sea port of Mariupol, Ukraine, Dec. 2, 2018.

The Kremlin's dustbin of dirty tricks in its on-and-off war with Ukraine under the guise of supporting ethnic Russian Ukrainian rebels whose 'rights' under the government of Ukraine, Russia claims have been abridged, continues. Moscow will not surrender its suzerainty of Ukraine, disrupted when the previous Moscow-appointed President fell victim to a popular revolt that began in Kiev and spread to the rest of Ukraine, to find opposition in eastern Ukraine.

Vladimir Putin's utter disdain for Ukraine's fantasizing that it can consider itself a sovereign nation separate and distinct from the Russian Federation is more than evident in his authorization of Russian undercover military agents joining the conflict against the Ukrainian military upholding Ukrainian sovereignty, refusing to allow the separation of eastern Ukraine to become part of Russia, only to suffer the humiliation of Putin ordering troops into the Crimean Peninsula to annex it under Russian command.

Back in 2014 Putin had designs on Mariupol and a land bridge between Russia and Crimea. What he was unable to grasp with the Ukrainian rebel militias he is undertaking by stealth and compulsion in squeezing Ukraine's humble, elderly and inadequate navy by refusing it access to the Sea of Azov to carry on normal shipping as guaranteed by international covenants on sea passage, effectively locking Ukrainian shipping out of regular, lawful access through the port city of Mariupol.

Ukrainian naval ships seized by Russia are seen docked in Kerch, in Russia-annexed Crimea, in this image from video released by Russia's Federal Security Service, Nov. 27, 2018.

The indignities and violent harm that Russia has imposed upon Ukraine constitute in fact, an act of war. One that Ukraine is not equipped to respond to as an act of war. The military colossus that Russia's armed forces and navy represent simply cannot be challenged by a Ukraine operating vessels from another century, an impoverished state without the resources it would require to fight back and assert itself.

While international reaction condemns Russia as it has done for so many 'irregularities' in its thuggish state actions, Putin treats it all as amusing, nothing else.

The now becalmed Ukrainian port on the Sea of Azov is void of the large ships that normally pass through; Mariupol is in a state of enforced under use since Russian aggression has disrupted sea traffic heading to and from Mariupol to other Ukrainian ports and beyond. Ukraine claims that over one hundred vessels await Russian permission to pass through the Kerch Strait, under the newly-built bridge to Crimea.

The Ukrainian border service is at a standstill. The on-again, off-again blockage by Russia of sea traffic has created a dilemma for Ukraine because no one knows when new orders will come out of the Kremlin to impose further blockages and challenges to the free flow of sea traffic. This has meant that shipowners respond to this instability by sending their vessels elsewhere, bypassing Mariupol.

Mariupol is mostly empty, points out Andrii Klymenko, head of an independent research group in Kiev monitoring maritime traffic "because of the fears of shipowners". Well founded fears to any enterprise.

Mariupol is one of ten regions declared by Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko under martial law, linked to the clash at sea and the decision by the Russian navy to seize three elderly Ukrainian naval vessels, further diminishing its tiny naval strength, as though to find humour in its virtual impotence. The commander at Mariupol's recruitment center, Lieutenant Colonel Volodymyr Levandovsky has called on reservists for medical check-ups awaiting the possibility his government may order a mobilization.

"I can say with one hundred percent conviction that this city will not be taken", he stated with grim intent. It remains to be seen whether Vladimir Putin will take another dramatic move as was done with the annexing of Crimea, to take possession of Ukraine's largest city on the Sea of Azov. But moves by Russia to this point have reduced the port city's traditional shipping traffic to its port to the point where life itself seems to have come to a standstill.