Eikö noiden mailien laskeminen ole turhaa niin kauan kuin krimi kuuluu ukrainaan. Onko jossain todettu että ukrainalle kuuluvan krimin aluevedet kuuluisivat venäjälle?
Niinpä. Tässä BBC:n pohdintaa asian tiimoilta. Kyllä tuolla pitäisi
tämän artikkelin mukaan saada aika vapaasti liikkua, vaikka sota-aluksella.
"Whose territory?
In saying that the Ukrainian ships were seized in its territorial waters, Russia is arguing that the vessels were in Russian "territorial sea", which extend up to 12 nautical miles from a country's coastline.
Ukraine considers Crimea as its own and could therefore argue that travelling in waters off the coast of Crimea is effectively moving through Ukrainian territorial waters.
Under the 2003 agreement between Russia and Ukraine, regardless of the status of Crimea itself, Ukraine argues, it has "freedom of navigation" in the Sea of Azov as well as access to it through the Kerch Strait.
The law of the sea
The UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) sets out various scenarios that give a state freedom of passage, irrespective of a state's territorial waters.
All ships, including foreign warships, enjoy the right of "innocent passage" within another state's territorial sea under international law.
Russia has disputed whether the passage was innocent. The UN law states that a passage is innocent "so long as it is not prejudicial to the peace, good order or security of the coastal state". That includes threat or use of force, exercise or practice with weapons or any act of propaganda affecting the security of the state.
Russia would need to prove that the passage of the Ukrainian vessels was not innocent and that Ukraine had showed "some form of hostile intent", says Mr Muller, to act against them.
According to the Russian FSB's account, Ukrainian vessels entered "combat readiness" in contravention of the innocent passage rules.
A country does not need to ask for permission before exercising that right but can be asked to follow certain rules once doing so.
This may include measures to protect security interests, says Dr Wim Muller, an international law expert at Chatham House.
Russia has pointed to a section of this UN convention that requires a warship to leave its territorial waters if it fails to comply with the laws of that country.
Under international law, a country would have the right to seize another warship only if the warship was acting in a hostile manner, says Valentin Schatz, a research associate in public international law at Germany's University of Hamburg.
Ukraine has also highlighted provisions (Article 38 and Article 44) of the convention, which require all ships to be given the freedom to travel through a strait from one part of the high seas to another - known as transit passage.
There are also rules within the UN convention that "ensure that ports which can only be reached by a single route through the strait, as is true of all ports in the Sea of Azov, always remain accessible", says Andrew Serdy, director of the Institute of Maritime Law at Southampton University."
