Russia's attempt to legalize the annexation of Crimea through the organization of the arrival of Western experts to the Kerch Strait is impossible, said the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Pavlo Klimkin during a joint press conference with his German colleague Heiko Maas. Thus Klimkin commented on the statement by the Foreign Minister of Russia Sergey Lavrov. Earlier, on January 18, he said that Russian President Vladimir Putin had agreed to the proposal of German Chancellor Angela Merkel to send German and French experts to control the free passage of ships through the Kerch Strait.

According to the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, Kyiv welcomes this initiative of Germany, but Moscow will not be able to legitimize the annexation of the Crimea by controlling access to it. "I want to emphasize very clearly that in the Kerch Strait as well as in the Azov Sea there is free navigation, in accordance with the principles of international law... We also discussed that Russia by definition should not be able to manipulate the monitoring on which we will reach agreement. That is, for example, Russia's attempt to tighten the specialists of Germany and France to the Kerch port and thus politically try to legalize the occupation of Crimea is impossible. And, of course, the very fact and the idea of obtaining the consent of the occupier in the occupied territory are unacceptable for us," Klimkin said, Radio Liberty reports.

He noted that Russia opposes to attempts of international humanitarian and human rights organizations to gain access regarding the annexed Peninsula. According to Radio Liberty "Monitoring should be based on a clear political position regarding the illegality of Russia's usurpation of Ukraine's sovereign rights. This is our fundamental position. And, of course, we are well aware that the principle of freedom of navigation and the principle of safety of navigation are important, but these are two fundamentally different principles. Therefore, the monitoring mechanism about which we will talk about should not be limited to some physical aspects of the vessels traffic by the Kerch Strait or pilot support issues. It should be focused on achieving freedom of navigation, " the Minister said.

He added that he agreed with the Maas to conduct expert consultations on monitoring. On the morning of January 18, Heiko Maas visited Moscow, and he arrived in Kyiv, where he met with the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Pavlo Klimkin. Having Russia's attempt to legalize the annexation of Crimea through the organization of the arrival of Western experts to the Kerch Strait is impossible, said the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Pavlo Klimkin during a joint press conference with his German colleague Heiko Maas. Thus Klimkin commented on the statement by the Foreign Minister of Russia Sergey Lavrov. Earlier, on January 18, he said that Russian President Vladimir Putin had agreed to the proposal of German Chancellor Angela Merkel to send German and French experts to control the free passage of ships through the Kerch Strait.

According to the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, Kyiv welcomes this initiative of Germany, but Moscow will not be able to legitimize the annexation of the Crimea by controlling access to it. "I want to emphasize very clearly that in the Kerch Strait as well as in the Azov Sea there is free navigation, in accordance with the principles of international law... We also discussed that Russia by definition should not be able to manipulate the monitoring on which we will reach agreement. That is, for example, Russia's attempt to tighten the specialists of Germany and France to the Kerch port and thus politically try to legalize the occupation of Crimea is impossible. And, of course, the very fact and the idea of obtaining the consent of the occupier in the occupied territory are unacceptable for us," Klimkin said, Radio Liberty reports.

He noted that Russia opposes to attempts of international humanitarian and human rights organizations to gain access regarding the annexed Peninsula. According to Radio Liberty "Monitoring should be based on a clear political position regarding the illegality of Russia's usurpation of Ukraine's sovereign rights. This is our fundamental position. And, of course, we are well aware that the principle of freedom of navigation and the principle of safety of navigation are important, but these are two fundamentally different principles. Therefore, the monitoring mechanism about which we will talk about should not be limited to some physical aspects of the vessels traffic by the Kerch Strait or pilot support issues. It should be focused on achieving freedom of navigation, " the Minister said.

He added that he agreed with the Maas to conduct expert consultations on monitoring. On the morning of January 18, Heiko Maas visited Moscow, and he arrived in Kyiv, where he met with the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Pavlo Klimkin. Having taken the floor, Geiko Maas expressed concern about the situation in the Azov Sea. According to him, he discussed this issue with Lavrov during his morning visit to Moscow. "I've made it clear what we expect.: Russia should provide free passage of the Kerch Strait. We hear that this has already happened and we want it to be provided on a long-term basis. The crisis, which was in December, in this form, should not happen again. For this we need one thing: clarity about the situation on the ground," he said, informs Radio Liberty.

The the Federal Minister for Foreign Affairs expressed the wish that all parties come to an agreement on the monitoring of the Kerch Strait. He added that during his visit to Russia, he once again called on the Kremlin to release Ukrainian political prisoners, in particular, director Oleg Sentsov and prisoners of war who were seamen. Referring to Radio Liberty "this issue should be resolved by the Russian side. We stand for the release of these people and will not give in on this issue," – says Maas.[1]

In turn, the Foreign Minister of Russia Sergey Lavrov noted that at the meeting with Maas he received a proposal that will "pack" the visit of experts in some document that needs to be agreed with Ukraine." "We said honestly, if our colleagues are interested in what President Putin promised to Chancellor Merkel, it can be done today, tomorrow, at any time. If the idea is to translate all this into a kind of political procedure, in which the Ukrainian side will take some decisions, then we risk being in the very situation in which the Normandy format of the Steinmeier formula turned out to be," said Lavrov referring to Radio Liberty. He said that the freedom of navigation in the Kerch Strait has always been. So, the Kremlin has set one condition - Ukraine should be excluded this process, informs Ukr.Media.

Meanwhile, on January 24 it became known that the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) adopted a resolution on aggravation in the Azov Sea and the Kerch Strait. 103 deputies voted for adoption of the document, 3 voted against, 16 abstained. During the discussion, the deputies decided not to mention in the document the term" prisoners of war", on which insisted the Ukrainian side.

It should be reminded that on January 24 the PACE hold a debate on the consequences of Russia's naval aggression against Ukraine. Earlier, the PACE Bureau softened the wording and refused to mention the "breakdown of the peace process" in the title of the future decision of the Assembly - the document entitled " The escalation of tensions around the Sea of Azov and the Kerch Strait and threats to European security".[2] 

In particular, the resolution of the PACE adopted the following provisions:

– PACE briefly listed the events that occurred on November 25, recalling that "Russian border guards and the Federal Security Service (FSB) opened fire on [Ukrainian] vessels, seized these vessels and 24 Ukrainian sailors";

– The Assembly condemned the use of force by Russians and recalled that Russia, like Ukraine, made a commitment to solve disputes peacefully;

– Deputies alsostated that Russia under the existing agreements had no right not to prevent the pass of the Ukrainian vessels through the Strait;

– And, of course, in addition, the resolution recalls the previous decisions of PACE, according to which the Crimea is unambiguously Ukrainian and it is not even debated; Kerch Bridge is built illegally; etc.[3]

Consequently, in view of the above at the negotiations between Heiko Maas and Sergey Lavrov, there were no essential achievements, given that the negotiations between Russia and Germany on the implementation of a monitoring mission in the Kerch Strait began more than a month ago. In addition, the visit of the German monitoring group to Kerch still has not happened. That is, it seems that the separate negotiations between the pro-Russian forces and Russia on the implementation of a monitoring mission without Ukraine took place to remove the threat of sanctions against the "Nord stream-2". In general, although Ukraine has received fair support in the PACE on the "Azov crisis" it is still far from complete victory over Russia. Taking into account that the pro-Russian lobby in PACE, headed by the Secretary General of the Council of Europe Thorbjørn Jagland, is trying to return the Russian delegation to work in this organization, the the situation looks like the settlement of the "Azov crisis" in the near future seems unattainable.