The most recent clash points to a growing trend in international relations, where military force, economic power and major building and infrastructure programs are used alongside cyber weapons, propaganda and more. Such confrontations can be largely bloodless — as in the South China Sea — or brutally violent, as in Ukraine’s Donbass or the savage Middle Eastern proxy wars of Syria and Yemen.
Such confrontations appear steadily on the rise, fueled by growing tensions on a host of topics from trade to human rights. Disagreements between Washington and Beijing undermined the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Papua New Guinea earlier this month. The mounting Azov Sea crisis will now feed into this week’s G20 summit in Argentina, which both Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump are scheduled to attend.
As in the South China Sea, where Beijing has also used giant engineering works to reclaim islands and build military bases in disputed waters, the Azov Sea conflict has been long building in plain sight. Work on the bridge began in 2015, the year after Ukraine lost control of Crimea to Moscow. Putin eventually acknowledged that Russian troops had taken part in the annexation, but continues to deny Moscow’s military involvement elsewhere in Ukraine despite widespread evidence to the contrary.
Moscow appears similarly disingenuous over events in the Azov Sea. Last week, a senior Russian diplomat accused Western states of deliberately stoking tensions to justify new sanctions. Like the annexation of Crimea, this maritime version of a land grab is illegal under international law — the Azov Sea had been judged under joint Russian-Ukrainian jurisdiction.
The reality, however, is that it is now under Russian domination. Its sole major port in Ukrainian territory, Mariupol, is now effectively blockaded; even before Sunday’s incident, Russian interference with shipping was causing serious harm to the local economy. Mariupol’s residents may now fear worse — fighting came within a few miles of the city in 2014 and sporadic battles have continued further east around Donbass and Luhansk, killing more than 10,000.
In the run-up to this weekend’s confrontation, Ukrainian commanders boasted they would open a naval base in the Azov Sea by Christmas, with the explicit aim of preventing the area from becoming a new Crimea. It’s now evident that tactic would almost certainly invite massive Russian retaliation, which means Ukraine appears to be seeking other options. On Sunday night, Russian media reported heightened Ukrainian shelling on the battlefields of Donbass.
Despite increased Western military aid since Crimea, Ukraine remains outside NATO — meaning there is no treaty obligation for Western states to act. However, European nations and many in the U.S. national security community would like to see further direct support, likely training and perhaps further weapons. U.S. and other NATO warships may also step up their presence in the nearby Black Sea. Offshore confrontations there, too, are on the rise — one British warship earlier this year was aggressively overflown by up to 17 Russian jets.