Russia says it plans to deploy more of its advanced S-400 surface-to-air missile systems to Crimea as tensions rise with Ukraine over Moscow's seizure of three Ukrainian navy ships and their crews.
Russia has steadily poured new military hardware into Crimea since it annexed it from Ukraine in 2014. Moscow's announcement about new missiles comes as it and Kiev try to pin the blame on each other for the confrontation on Sunday.
Witnesses also observed on Wednesday a Russian navy minesweeper, the Vice-Admiral Zakharin, heading for the Sea of Azov, which is used by both Ukraine and Russia and is an area of growing tensions, from the Black Sea.
Ukraine introduced martial law in parts of the country after the seizure of its ships saying it feared a Russian invasion.
Russian news agencies cited Vadim Astafyev, a spokesman for Russia's southern military district, as saying a new battalion of S-400 missiles would be delivered to Crimea soon and become operational by year's end.
The deployment is likely to have been long-planned but its timing appears designed to send a message to Ukraine and the West that Russia is serious about defending what it regards as its own territory and waters.
Crimea already hosts three battalions of the anti-aircraft missile systems which have a range of up to 400 km allowing Russia to control large swaths of the skies above the Black Sea.
The new deployment will allow it to increase its air defence coverage area.
A Crimean court was due to order the detention of nine of the 24 captured Ukrainian sailors - including senior Ukrainian naval officers and at least one member of Ukraine's SBU intelligence agency - later on Wednesday
A court in Simferopol, the capital of Crimea, on Tuesday ordered the other 15 Ukrainian sailors to be detained for two months pending a possible trial.
All of the sailors face jail terms of up to six years if found guilty of what Moscow says was a plot to illegally cross the Russian border by trying to pass through the Russian-controlled Kerch Strait.
Ukraine says its ships did nothing wrong and have every right to use the strait, the only gateway to the Sea of Azov from the Black Sea, without Russian permission.
Ukraine's top diplomat in Germany urged Berlin and other Western states on Wednesday to extend sanctions, ban energy imports and put the NordStream 2 gas pipeline on hold.
The ambassador even raised the possibility of sending German marines to the region.
"Germany must take a clear line ... and put (Russian President Vladimir) Putin in his place," ambassador Andrij Melnyk told German radio. "Everything is at stake."
"The club of sanctions should be wielded quickly .... ," he said, adding only such measures could stop Putin's "brutal, hoooligan-like" behaviour.
