The deputy head of the people's militia department of the proclaimed Donetsk people's republic, Eduard Basurin, said that the Security Service of Ukraine is ready to sink foreign ships in the Sea of ??Azov. "According to our data, the SBU leadership is developing several scenarios of provocations in the waters of the Sea of ??Azov in order to escalate tensions, and against this background - an attempt of an armed invasion from the sea to the territory of the Republic," the Basurin Donetsk News Agency quotes.. According to him, the Ukrainian special services scheduled these events for the first half of next year.. Basurin believes that Kiev can go for the most extreme options of action "up to the sinking of a commercial vessel, both Ukrainian and foreign".

Since the beginning of the year, the situation in the Azov Sea has seriously tense, reminds RIA Novosti. In March, Ukrainian border guards arrested the Crimean trawler "Nord" with ten citizens of the Russian Federation on board, and in August the tanker "Mechanic Pogodin" was detained in the port of Kherson. In response, Russia strengthened border searches at the Sea of ??Azov, after which Kiev threatened to increase its presence in the water area and build a naval base..