MOSCOW, July 14 — A treaty that was supposed to settle maritime boundaries and guarantee shared access to the Sea of Azov and the Kerch Strait now sits in legal limbo, a document both parties signed but one side has effectively shredded. Signed on December 24, 2003, and ratified by both Russia and Ukraine in 2004, the Treaty on the Sea of Azov and the Kerch Strait designated those waters as shared internal waters of both states.
The mechanics here were straightforward: joint navigation, joint fishing rights, and a requirement that both parties coordinate on environmental protection and resource extraction. On paper, it was a functional bilateral arrangement.
The catch is that paper has meant very little since March 2014. After Russia’s annexation of Crimea, Moscow began asserting exclusive control over the Kerch Strait, the narrow waterway linking the Sea of Azov to the Black Sea. That unilateral move effectively nullified the treaty’s core provisions.
Russia did not formally withdraw — the treaty is still technically in force — but it stopped implementing it.
The bridge and the blockade
The most visible violation came in 2018, when Russia built the Kerch Strait Bridge without Ukraine’s consent. The bridge physically restricts passage through the strait, and Russia has used it to control which vessels enter and leave the Sea of Azov. Ukraine has repeatedly called for the treaty’s enforcement.
Russia has ignored those calls. Follow the money: the bridge connects the Russian mainland to the annexed Crimean Peninsula, cementing Moscow’s physical control over the waterway.
It also gives Russia a choke point over Ukrainian ports in the Sea of Azov, including Mariupol and Berdyansk, which handle significant grain and steel exports. The treaty’s breakdown is not just a legal abstraction — it has direct economic consequences for Ukraine’s maritime trade.
International ruling, no compliance
The International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea ruled on May 25, 2019, that Russia must allow Ukrainian ships passage through the strait. Russia has not complied with that ruling. The tribunal’s decision carries legal weight under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, to which both Russia and Ukraine are parties.
But Russia has treated it as non-binding. On closer reading, the sequence is clear: the 2003 treaty was the legal framework, the 2014 annexation was the rupture, the 2018 bridge was the physical seizure, and the 2019 tribunal ruling was the failed remedy.
Each step deepened the impasse. Ukraine continues to argue that the treaty remains in force and that Russia is in violation of its terms. Moscow’s position, implicit in its actions, is that the post-2014 facts on the ground supersede the agreement.
The treaty has not been formally denounced by either party, but its provisions are not being implemented.
What to watch
The treaty’s status is a key legal dimension of the broader Russia-Ukraine conflict. Any future negotiation over maritime boundaries, access to Ukrainian ports, or the status of Crimea will have to reckon with this agreement and its systematic violation. For now, the document exists on paper, but the strait is under Russian control, the bridge stands, and the tribunal’s ruling remains unenforced.
