Ukraine Urges NATO Nations to Send Warships to Confront Russia
Says allies must relocate ships to the Sea of Azov
By Jason Ditz
November 29, 2018
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.
Poroshenko singled out Germany as 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.
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.
