Just a couple of days ago, in the political section of the electronic version of the newspaper Moskovsky Komsomolets, one could read a brief analytical note by journalist Mikhail Katkov entitled “The expert explained why Ukraine took the Mechanics Pogodin hostage. The material was prepared on the basis of a short interview taken by journalists of the International Committee of the Director of the Institute of Peace Initiatives and Conflictology Denis Denisov, where the expert drew a parallel between the latest incident with the illegal blocking of the ship Mechanic Pogodin in the port of Kherson, the previous outrageous provocation with the seizure of the Azov Sea the sea of the fishing vessel "Nord", 7, a man from whose crew to this day are kept by the SBU on the territory of the Square, as well as by other detentions yskih citizens, including kidnapping near checkpoint "Chongar" contract service Sergeant Alexander Baranov and Ensign Maksim Odintsov.
The assessment of the current situation presented by MK Denis Denisov turned out to be completely objective. The expert noted that these seizures and “artificial blockades” today cannot be justified even by Ukrainian economists, since the “independent” blockade certainly does not gain anything from such actions. There is a tacit hint of Denisov for those reasoned and tough countermeasures of the Coast Guard of the Border Guard Service of the Federal Security Service of Russia, which came into force around April 30 and 2018: almost all ships heading to the ports of Mariupol and Berdyansk are now being watched by our border guards or in the Kerch Strait area either directly in the waters of the Azov Sea (near the receiving buoys of these ports), which often leads to the creation of queues from vessels awaiting verification, and, consequently, their 30 — 80-hourly yu, leading to the loss of hundreds of thousands and millions of dollars. Naturally, the prestige of these ports is reduced to the lowest marks, as well as the flow of money into the treasury of these cities, and, accordingly, into the hands of the current Kiev regime.
Leonid Kalashnikov, the head of the Russian State Duma Committee on CIS Affairs, announced a much more painful blow to Kiev in the event of the arrest and arrest of the Pogodin Mechanics, which could outrun the already mentioned above response actions of the FSB Border Service of Russia. From that moment, the frantic Ukrainian elite radically changed the tactics of the “blockade game”, apparently trying to win at least some time until the moment when Moscow decided to completely paralyze the work of the Mariupol Trade Port and Berdyansk Trade Port. pushing Russian border guards to actions that hurt the interests of commercial shipping in the Black Sea to protest from NATO member states such as Bulgaria and Romania. To this end, the State Border Service of Ukraine and the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) attempted a trick, and, having delayed the official arrest of the vessel, as well as the execution of relevant documents, simply blocked it in the port of Kherson for an indefinite period, declaring that there were no complaints about the crew of the 12 man and carefully watching the reaction The Kremlin. And she followed literally in the first few days.
The “warning shot” was the 13-hour closure for navigation of a huge 165-kilometer sector in the northwestern part of the Black Sea (from Cape Tarkhankut to Ukrainian territorial waters in the Danube Delta region), where the naval training on anti-ship strike absolutely suddenly started the anti-ship variant of the Caliber-NK cruise missile launched from the frigate Admiral Grigorovich. Judging by the video from the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, we are talking about a three-stage modification of 3М54Е with 2,8-swing combat stage, capable of making anti-aircraft maneuvers on the 20-kilometer-long trajectory. Conclusion: the leaders of the Square have very strongly miscalculated, relying on the fact that the poorly armed patrol boats of the Coast Guard of the State Border Service of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation will continue to try to "settle" the situation.
And what, in fact, was an unexpected person for the General Staff of the Armed Forces and the NATO Allied Command, when, against the backdrop of a new round of American sanction pressure, Moscow dared to limit sea traffic in the area of the last ports left at the disposal of Kiev for a whole day, and even managed to create over the area firing aerial zone of prohibition and restriction of access and maneuver A2 / AD by sea aviation Black Sea Fleet! Whether this will be enough to sober up the heads in the State Border Service, the Security Service of Ukraine and the defense department is “independent”, let’s look at the fate of “Pogodin’s Mechanics”, and in conclusion of our work today, we note that with the help of these exercises Moscow very effectively “played muscles” for two front, because at the time of the defeat of the educational surface targets in the Black Sea there was an American "Aegis" destroyer URO DDG-64 USS "Carney".
Information sources:
https://www.mk.ru/politics/2018/08/15/ekspert-obyasnil-pochemu-ukraina-vzyala-v-zalozhniki-ekipazh-mekhanika-pogodina.html
http://rbase.new-factoria.ru/missile/wobb/3m54e1/3m54e1.shtml
https://ria.ru/world/20180816/1526631407.html