Russia Launches New Attack on Ukraine

Alex Johnson at NBC News: Russia Attacks, Seizes Ukrainian Vessels in Black Sea off Crimea.

Ukraine convened an emergency meeting of what it called its war cabinet on Sunday after it accused Russia of having fired on three of its vessels in the Black Sea, injuring at least six sailors.

Russia's Federal Security Service, or FSB, confirmed that it had seized what it called three Ukrainian "warships," saying they had trespassed into Russian territorial waters. It said that "weapons were used to force the Ukrainian warships to stop" and that three Ukrainian service members were treated for minor injuries...

Oleksii Makeiev, political director of Ukraine's Foreign Affairs Ministry, called the incident an act of "warmongering" that "undermines security of the whole region." The country's National Security and Defense Council, of which President Petro Poroshenko is chairman, approved a proposal to introduce martial law for 60 days, Poroshenko's office said early Monday.

"We have all irrefutable evidence that this aggression, this attack on the Ukrainian navy's warships, was not a mistake, not an accident, but a deliberate action," Poroshenko said.

A couple of things to note:

1. A lot of the reporting on this incident regurgitates Russia's narrative, suggesting that Ukraine somehow provoked Russia and that Russia was merely defending itself. But that ignores that this is part of an ongoing campaign of Russian aggression, which includes the annexation of Crimea, the invasion of Ukraine, a sustained campaign of assassinations, and ongoing cyberattacks on "practically every sector of Ukraine: media, finance, transportation, military, politics, energy."

2. As my friend Andrea Chalupa noted on Twitter: "This is all happening the day after Ukraine honored and mourned the millions killed in Stalin's genocide famine at a time Stalin has been restored as a hero of Russia under Putin." It is simply not a coincidence that this happened at the same time as the designated remembrance of the Holodomor.

Be wary of reports parroting Russia's line that they were merely defending themselves. They attacked first, and they have kept attacking, and this is yet another attack in that series.