On May 25, the Hamburg-based International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) ordered Russia to release and repatriate to Ukraine all 24 sailors and three naval vessels seized through military force off Crimea’s coast exactly six months earlier (see Eurasia Daily Monitor, November 26, 2018), in the “Kerch incident” with worldwide reverberations. The ITLOS decision (Itlos.org, May 25) represents a significant success for Ukraine and for international law. But it is only an initial step in a litigation that Russia has the power to drag out indefinitely or (less likely) to block outright.