We cannot stand by while Ukraine falls prey to Russia

Mariupol and Berdyansk: these are not familiar places – yet. But what Russia is doing in the Sea of Azov should concern us all. The interception of three Ukrainian patrol boats and the capture of their crews was not a one-off flare-up but the latest battle in a prolonged period of economic warfare.

Before the Russians seized Crimea in 2014, the Sea of Azov was shared peaceably between Russia and Ukraine. Shipping access through the Kerchen Strait was governed by their 2003 Agreement. Fishing rights and quotas were negotiated annually.

Crimea changed all that. Since the completion this spring of the bridge across the Strait, larger ships can’t access the Azov Sea at all because of the new height restriction.

Russians have persistently delayed the passage of even medium-sized ships to the Ukrainian ports of Mariupol and Berdyansk: these have to wait for bogus “security inspections” before being allocated pilots. Delays of 10-12 days have become common.

The effect on south-eastern Ukraine has been devastating. Bulk cargos, their mainstream business, are down by half to two-thirds in both ports.

The raw materials required for the foundries and engineering plants can’t come in; their exports can’t get out.

Mariupol, a city of nearly half a million people, is isolated: its airport, too close to the Line of Contact, is shut; trains take 12 hours to Kiev; even doing that journey by car with a police escort took us 11 hours last weekend.

Russia is intent upon turning the Sea of Azov into a Russian lake: the blockade of the Kerch Strait is an act of economic warfare, designed to cut off Mariupol, undermine commerce, and further destabilise eastern Ukraine.

Capturing another navy’s ships and imprisoning their crews are themselves illegal acts. They violate the 2003 Agreement, the Law of the Sea Convention, the UN Charter and the respect for Ukraine’s territorial integrity enshrined in the Budapest Treaty of 1994.

What is the West doing? Shamefully the European Council did not deplore

or condemn these violations: it “expressed its utmost concern”. In Kiev, they contrast this with the reaction to Salisbury and the immediate expulsion of Russian diplomats around the world.

Sanctions against Russia may have been “rolled over” but they haven’t been extended against new individuals and sectors. They should be until the boats and their crews are returned, and the strait fully reopened.

Britain can certainly do more. We should send our Navy into the Black Sea more regularly. Operation Orbital, which I began in 2015 to help train the Ukrainian army, should be extended to full-scale naval training in inspection and anti-boarding techniques.

We should restore the RAF Typhoon deployment to Romania that strengthened Nato surveillance of the Black Sea.

Beyond that, we and the EU should look again at what can be done to end the isolation of eastern Ukraine. Its infrastructure is desperately weak: factories and thousands of jobs are dependent on a section of single-track diesel-hauled line. The highways in and out need huge improvement. Mariupol urgently needs help with its water supply. We pour billions into sub-saharan Africa but UK aid to Ukraine is only £35million a year.

At home, we have still failed to use the Magnitsky legislation, banning travel and freezing assets of those involved in criminal acts. We should also use Unexplained Wealth Orders to stop Russian nationals using London to help finance the Russian military machine.

We must look again at invoking Article 6 of the Budapest Agreement to which we are one of the four signatories. We should be working with the US to ensure international treaties are properly respected.

Few tourists (and even fewer MPS) reach the Sea of Azov. These cities are a long way from us.

Ukraine does not enjoy the protection of Nato membership, and is not in the European Union: corruption is endemic, the economy weak and the politics febrile.

But this is nonetheless a European democracy under the cosh of Russian aggression. As we’ve seen in Salisbury, that’s something that matters to us all.

Michael Fallon is the Conservative MP for Sevenoaks and a former secretary of defence