Gavin Williamson has voiced support for Ukraine as tensions remain high with Russia.

The defence secretary was in Ukraine on Friday, a few weeks after Russia seized three Ukrainian naval vessels and their crews in the Black Sea.

Russia had accused the sailors of entering its territorial waters illegally, something Ukraine denies.

But on Friday, Mr Williamson said the Black Sea does not belong to Russia.

He also said that Britain has sent a Royal Navy ship - HMS Echo - to the area to show that Kiev does not stand alone.


The vessel docked at the port of Odessa earlier this week.

Mr Williamson said: "The reason...that HMS Echo is here is that we firstly want to demonstrate the solidarity that we have with Ukraine and the fact that Ukraine doesn't stand alone.

"But also demonstrate our right to be able to come to ports such as Odessa, for freedom of navigation, for freedom for navies to be able to operate in the Black Sea.

"This isn't Russia's sea, this is an international sea."

Defence Minister Poltorak and Defence Secretary @GavinWilliamson receiving a briefing on board HMS Echo while in Odesa. 🇬🇧🇺🇦 pic.twitter.com/uOufGPWbNX — Judith Gough (@JudithGoughFCO) 21 December 2018

Eleanor Novak, mother of one of the captured sailors, told Sky News: "I want to tell him how much I love him. I want him to know he is not alone.

"There are so many people who are waiting for him back home, so many people who are providing support to me right now. I want him to feel love and there will come a time when we will reunite. He is innocent.

"We don't know what motivated that country to do what they've done. My kids, my son and other sons have been doing their job, they've done nothing wrong."

Victor Soroka, father of another of the sailors, added: "He (Putin) is a pirate who stabbed with a knife the brother nation and the neighbourhood in the back. Very bad and mean. It was a low act."

After Russia seized the sailors late in November, Ukraine's president Petro Poroshenko said: "I want to emphasise separately that 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."

The incident was the first major confrontation at sea in the long-running conflict pitting Ukraine against Moscow and Russian-backed separatists in the country's east.