Berlin
\nUkrainian President Petro Poroshenko asked NATO members including Germany Thursday to send naval vessels to the Sea of Azov to back his country in the standoff with Russia.<\/p>\n
\u201cGermany is one of our closest allies, and we hope that states within NATO are now ready to relocate naval ships to the Sea of Azov in order to assist Ukraine and provide security,\u201d he told Germany\u2019s Bild daily.<\/p>\n
President Vladimir Putin insisted Wednesday that Russian forces were right to seize three Ukrainian ships last weekend.<\/p>\n
But Poroshenko charged that Putin \u201cwants nothing less than to occupy the sea. The only language he understands is the unity of the Western world.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe cannot accept this aggressive policy of Russia. First it was Crimea, then eastern Ukraine, now he wants the Sea of Azov.<\/p>\n
\u201cGermany, too, has to ask itself: What will Putin do next if we do not stop him?\u201d he added on the day Ukraine\u2019s Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman was to visit Berlin.<\/p>\n
Russia fired on and then seized three Ukrainian ships on Sunday, accusing them of illegally entering its waters in the Sea of Azov, in a dramatic spike in tensions that raises fears of a wider escalation.<\/p>\n
Kiev accused Russia, which annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, of launching \u201ca new phase of aggression\u201d.<\/p>\n
NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg on Monday demanded Russia free the Ukrainian ships and sailors, warning Moscow that \u201cits actions have consequences\u201d.<\/p>\n
Poroshenko also told the German newspaper that German \u201cChancellor (Angela) Merkel is a great friend of Ukraine.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn 2015, she already saved our country through her negotiations in Minsk, and we hope she will once again support us so strongly, together with our other allies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Berlin Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko asked NATO members including Germany Thursday to send naval vessels to the Sea of Azov to back his country in the standoff with Russia. \u201cGermany is one of our closest allies, and we hope that states within NATO are now ready to relocate naval ships to the Sea of Azov […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":48652,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-48651","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48651","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48651"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48651\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48653,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48651\/revisions\/48653"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}