Two British minehunter ships destined for Ukraine cannot travel through Turkish waters, Ankara stressed Tuesday, citing an international pact.
U.K. Defense Secretary Grant Shapps announced last month that Ukraine’s armed forces had struck a deal to procure the Sandown Class vessels from Britain’s Royal Navy as the war-torn country grapples with Russia’s continued blockade of the Black Sea.
But Turkey confirmed it had informed its NATO allies that the ships would not be allowed to travel through its waters.
Ships have a home port, as defined by the owner of the ship. If a ship is sold, it would typically get a new home port, owned by the new owner.
All of Ukraine’s ports are in the Black Sea. Hence any ship owned by Ukraine not currently in the Black Sea is sailing back to port.
Why is that hard to understand?
Russia has several deep water ports outside of the Black Sea. It’s a slightly different ballgame, wouldn’t you agree?
One cannot “return” to a new “home”.
You can return to your old home, or move to a new one.
Really? If you buy a house, the closing happens at the bank, then you can’t return to your home?
Of course you can.
That would be returning to somewhere you have been before.
You cannot return to somewhere you have not been.
That’s semantics - you aren’t a lawyer obviously. Nor, I imagine have you actually read the convention.
Around February 27–28, Turkey refused permission for three out of four Russian warships to enter the Black Sea as their home base was not on the Black Sea.
Surely these two new ships home base is in fact the Black Sea.
Dunno why you’re dying on this hill when it literally says in the article that nobody expected the ships to be allowed to travel to the Black Sea. It’s almost like the experts know more than some anonymous armchair expert on Lemmy…
Nobody expected it because turkey is governed by a tyrant who sucks.
And he won’t do anything until he gets his pound of flesh whatever it may be. Just like with the Sweden and Finland joining NATO.
Nobody expected it because there is a literal convention preventing it. Sure, Erdogan is a cunt, but this isn’t the first time Turkey has denied passage. They’ve done it to Russia. They’ve done it to the US. And for all your talk of Erdogan wanting his pound of flesh, nobody is stupid enough to go up against the US defence forces unless they have very solid backing for their stance. Which the convention gives them. This scenario would be completely different if they were making exceptions for some but not others, but they’re not.