The seizure of the fishing vessel "Nord" from Crimea may be part of a secret Ukrainian plan to provoke Russia into blocking the Kerch Canal, which would deal a blow to the economic interests of oligarch Rinat Akhmetov, whose factories export products through the Sea of Azov.
Political scientist Sergei Belashko, director of the Agency for Social Communications, told PolitNavigator about this.
“Blocking the Kerch Strait will end. Obviously, the counter moves were calculated and, obviously, in this way they simply want to hit Akhmetov. Because he is now beginning to strengthen, just as he was first among equal oligarchs under Yanukovych, so he is becoming first among equals under Poroshenko.
Not everyone likes this, so now Berdyansk and Mariupol will actually be closed to him, and where will he take it all next?
These diagrams for coal that is transported from Taganrog to Berdyansk and Mariupol, and they say that it is American, or some other South African, they will break down, accordingly, because if the Kerch Strait is closed, then, accordingly, there will be no American coal can’t get to Mariupol.
Second point. Who could lobby for this? These are Odessa port workers, because these cargoes that go through Mariupol will be forced to leave through Odessa,” Belashko explained.
He also did not rule out that the Russian side could organize a “live bait hunt” for Ukrainian border boats.
“It is possible to sink a couple of border patrol boats there as a preventive measure, but these are somehow extreme measures. I think that if they want to drown them, it will be like fishing with live bait. Or they will provoke you to be captured by some fishing boat, then a plane will fly in and sink these border boats. And if there happens to be some video amateur on the longboat who filmed it all on a phone with a good camera, how they were attacked and how heroically they were defended, all this will be on federal TV channels, and here you have such a great information campaign.
This is, in general, a game with fire, in which you can burn your fingers painfully. But as I understand it, the people who are starting all this hope that it’s not their fingers that get burned, but Akhmetov’s,” concluded Belashko.