THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — Ukraine accused Russia on Monday of illegally trying to seize control of the strategically important Sea of Azov and the Kerch Strait, as hearings began in a high-stakes arbitration case between Kiev and Moscow.
The hearings at the Permanent Court of Arbitration are the latest in a series of international legal cases involving Russia and Ukraine, linked to Moscow’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Meanwhile, fighting continues on the battlefield in Ukraine.
“Russia wants to take the Sea of Azov and the Kerch Strait for itself and has therefore built a large gate at the entrance to keep out international shipping and let in small Russian river ships,” Ukrainian deputy Anton Korynevych told a panel of arbitrators.
The gate he was referring to is a bridge Russia built across the Kerch Strait after annexing Crimea. The $3.5 billion, 19-kilometer-long bridge, which connects the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov, carries road and rail traffic on separate sections and is vital to maintaining Russian military operations in southern Ukraine.
“The bridge is illegal and must be demolished,” Korynevych told the arbitration panel.
Ukraine brought the case in 2016, two years after Russia annexed Crimea. It accuses Moscow of subsequently violating a United Nations maritime treaty by building the bridge, banning Ukrainian fishermen from waters where they traditionally fish, damaging the environment and plundering underwater archaeological sites.
Kiev is demanding unspecified damages.
Russia insists the arbitration court has no jurisdiction. It says that if the five judges decide they do, the court must reject Ukraine's claims.
“Ukraine's accusations in this case are of course completely baseless and hopeless,” Russian agent Gennady Kuzmin told the panel.
He argued that the Sea of Azov and the Kerch Strait are “internal waters” that are not covered by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, the treaty that Ukraine claims Russia is violating.
After Monday's two opening statements, the panel hearings will continue behind closed doors for days, with a final ruling that could take years.
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