Moscow’s continuing efforts to reduce the Black Sea to the status of a de facto Russian lake (see Eurasia Daily Monitor, January 23) have forced Ukraine to seek increasingly inventive means of pushing back. Recently, some Ukrainian commentators have begun calling for a Timor Sea-type resolution for the territorial delimitation of the Black Sea that would involve Georgia and other littoral states as well as the Russian Federation (Svpressa.ru, May 8).

Additionally, some have called on Kyiv to come out strongly in favor of the position, floated by the Turkish government, that a new canal bypassing central Istanbul would not fall under the terms of the 1936 Montreux Convention, effectively annulling that nearly century-old accord (Topcur.ru, May 9; see EDM, March 31).