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Incident prompts Petro Poroshenko to propose martial law as UN Security Council calls emergency meeting

Russia has seized three Ukrainian navy vessels following a shoot-out in the Black Sea near the Crimean peninsula, prompting the UN Security Council to call an emergency meeting.The Russian coastguard opened fire on two artillery boats and a tug belonging to Ukraine which it claimed had made an unauthorised passage through Russia’s waters.Two of the craft, the ​Berdyansk and the Nikopol, were damaged and six crew members injured.The confrontation took place near the hotly contested Kerch Strait, which separates the peninsula from the Russian mainland. Russia’s FSB security service confirmed its border patrol boats had seized the Ukrainian naval vessels in the Black Sea and used weapons to force them to stop, Russian news agencies reported.Read more UK troop deployment to Ukraine likely to play into Kremlin’s hands Huge explosion at Ukraine ammunition dump leads thousands to evacuate Head of Russian spy agency behind Skripal poisoning dies Russia is bigger threat to UK than Islamist terrorists, Army head saysThe FSB said it had been forced to act because the ships had illegally entered its territorial waters, attempted illegal actions, and ignored warnings to stop while manoeuvring dangerously.“Weapons were used with the aim of forcibly stopping the Ukrainian warships,” the FSB said in a statement circulated to Russian state media.“As a result, all three Ukrainian naval vessels were seized in the Russian Federation’s territorial waters in the Black Sea.”Ukrainian authorities said they had given advance notice to the Russians that the vessels would be moving through the strait.The incident prompted Petro Poroshenko, the Ukrainian president, to push parliament to declare martial law after convening a meeting of his war cabinet.