Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has rejected accusations made by Leonid Osavolyuk, the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry's director of the First Territorial Department, that Russia was attempting to annex Ukraine's territory in the Kerch Strait. This region is of strategic importance in that it controls water routes and energy resources for both Russia and Ukraine — leading to a struggle for the territory since the fall of the Soviet Union. But the dispute has taken a very serious turn since Russia and Ukraine became locked into a larger and more serious battle for the latter's future as either submissive to Russia or independent as it strives to make a stronger alliance with the West. The Kerch Strait is a 25-mile-long channel that is no wider than 9 miles, linking the critically important Black Sea to the Sea of Azov off of Russia's Northern Caucasus border.