(Daily Beast) Russian security forces deployed coast guard vessels, jet fighters, and attack helicopters in an overwhelming assault on three Ukrainian navy boats attempting to pass through the narrow, Russian-controlled strait connecting the Black Sea and the smaller Sea of Azov on Sunday.
Experts said the attack signaled a wider Russian move against Ukraine, four years after Moscow’s forces seized the strategic Crimean Peninsula and backed pro-Russian separatists in the eastern Ukraine region known as Donbas. […]
It’s not impossible that Sunday’s clash happened on impulse. “It is an example of things happening without necessarily the parties involved having a clear idea of what they are doing,” Pavel Podvig, an independent expert on the Russian military, told The Daily Beast. “It is possible, of course, that there was a deliberate action of each side or one of them, but it’s also possible that neither side had a plan and things just happened.” […]
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