November 30, 2018

December 8, 2003

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Fifteen years ago, on December 8, 2003, Ukraine announced it would dig a channel in the Kerch Strait near the island of Tuzla – which had received media attention earlier in 2003 after Russia began construction of a dike in September to link Tuzla Island to Russian territory.

Ukraine and Russia had ongoing talks to delimit the Azov Sea as well as the Kerch Strait. Russia’s position was that the two bodies of water remain commonly held without a specifically drawn border, while Ukraine demanded that the two sides agree on a boundary in accordance with international standards.

 Heorii Kirpa of Ukraine’s Ministry of Transport said: “[The channel] will take the pressure [of erosion caused by the dike construction project] off Tuzla because it will redirect currents away from the island and, it will giver the Kerch Strait a second shipping lane and reduce the large amount of traffic that runs along the single deep channel we have right now. …[President Leonid Kuchma] approved the proposals on the need to continue the shipping lane between Tuzla and the dike to connect it to the Black Sea.”

 Mr. Kirpa said the project would require 680 to 780 meters of digging on the south side of the island to a depth of five meters. The new channel would be designated for shallow-hulled vessels and would be part of a project that had already been in development, which the transport minister said met all international norms and regulations. The channel would allow smaller ships to avoid the main shipping lane through the center of the Kerch Strait, north of Tuzla Island, instead bypassing via the eastern side of Tuzla and then cutting back south of the island.

 The new channel effectively created a divide between the island and the dike that Russia had constructed in September and October, which at the time had reached to less than 100 meters from the island’s shore. Russia’s construction of the dike sparked uproar in Ukraine and an exchange of sharp rhetoric.

 President Vladimir Putin halted the construction at the end of October 2003, and the project was aimed at protecting property on the northern shore from erosion. However, Russia began the project in contravention of specific language in a 1994 agreement on use of the Kerch Strait requiring it to do so.

 When the complaint was raised at a meeting of the U.N. Security Council, Russia questioned Ukraine’s right to the island, claiming that the Soviet Union had gifted it with Crimea to Ukraine in 1954.

Tensions escalated on December 2, 2003, when Ukraine sent border troops to defend its territory and blocked the pathway of the approaching stone and sand wall with pontoon bridges. The crisis was defused only after President Kuchma aborted a state visit to Brazil and returned to Ukraine, where he immediately traveled to Tuzla and stated that he would not concede the territory to Russia. A permanent border station, manned by 50 troops, had been developed on the island.

 Ongoing talks between Ukraine and Russia were scheduled to resume after the Christmas holiday. 

This year, on November 25, Russia escalated its war against Ukraine when Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) ships attacked three Ukrainian naval vessels – injuring six and imprisoning 23 sailors, including Ukrainian counterintelligence officers – as they attempted to pass through the Kerch Strait. The international community has largely sided with Ukraine, calling the attack a provocation by Russia, while Ukraine also cites Russia’s actions as a violation of international maritime law and a violation of the agreement between Russia and Ukraine on the shared use of the Sea of Azov.  

Source: “Tuzla still in the news, as Ukraine announces it will dig a channel,” by Roman Woronowycz, The Ukrainian Weekly, December 14, 2003.

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