; Whereas relying on other countries to assert claims on behalf of the United States at the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague is woefully insufficient to defend and uphold United States sovereign rights and interests; Whereas the Permanent Court of Arbitration, in the July 12, 2016, ruling on the case In the Matter of the South China Sea Arbitration, stated that the Tribunal communicated to the Parties and the U.S. Embassy that it had decided that only interested States parties to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea will be admitted as observers and thus could not accede to the U.S. request to send a representative to observe the hearing ; Whereas, on November 25, 2018, the Russian Federation violated international norms and binding agreements, including the UNCLOS, in firing upon, ramming, and seizing Ukrainian vessels and crews attempting to pass through the Kerch Strait; Whereas, on May 25, 2019, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea ruled in a vote of 19–1 that [t]he Russian Federation shall immediately release the Ukrainian naval vessels Berdyansk, Nikopol and Yani Kapu, and return them to the custody of Ukraine and that [t]he Russian Federation shall immediately release the 24 detained Ukrainian servicemen and allow them to return to Ukraine , demonstrating the Tribunal’s rejection of the Russian Federation’s arguments in that matter in relation to the Law of the Sea; Whereas, despite the Tribunal’s ruling aligning with the position of the United States Government on the November 25, 2018, incident, the continued nonparticipation of the United States in the UNCLOS limits the ability of the United States to effectively respond to the Russian Federation’s actions and to any potential future violations by the Russian Federation and any other signatory of UNCLOS