Berlin Asked To Send Delegation To Kerch Strait Over Month Ago, Nobody Came So Far- Lavrov

Fakhir Rizvi Published January 18, 2019 | 05:19 PM

German Chancellor Angela Merkel asked Russian President Vladimir Putin to send a delegation of experts to the Kerch Strait to observe the ship movement there a over a month ago, but nobody has come so far, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Friday

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 18th January, 2019) German Chancellor Angela Merkel asked Russian President Vladimir Putin to send a delegation of experts to the Kerch Strait to observe the ship movement there a over a month ago, but nobody has come so far, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Friday.

"More than a month ago, chancellor Merkel asked president Putin to allow German experts to come to the Kerch Strait and look at the navigation there ... And president Putin agreed immediately," Lavrov told reporters after talks with German counterpart Heiko Maas.

According to Lavrov, Berlin then asked for French experts to come as well, which Moscow agreed to.

"It has been more than a month now, but we have not seen anyone arriving. And today Mr Maas gave me a proposal, which is packaging this trip into some document that has to be coordinated with Ukraine .

.. If the idea is it is necessary to use a political procedure where Ukraine will be taking some decisions, we risk finding ourselves in the same situation as with the Normandy Four format," Lavrov said.

On November 25, Ukraine's Berdyansk and Nikopol gunboats, and the Yany Kapu tugboat illegally crossed the Russian maritime border as they sailed toward the Kerch Strait, the entrance to the Sea of Azov. Russia seized the Ukrainian vessels and detained 24 crew members after they failed to respond to a demand to stop.

After the incident, a criminal case on illegal border crossing was opened in Russia.

Putin said that the incident was a provocation prepared in advance as a pretext to introduce martial law and that provocation could be linked to Poroshenko's low approval ratings ahead of the presidential election.