Ukraine’s Navy is developing an operation to clear mines from the Black Sea, the Navy’s commander, Oleksiy Neizhpapa, said in an interview with ArmyInform published on July 2, 2023, on the eve of Ukraine’s Navy Day.
Mines swept out to sea
Neizhpapa said the destruction of the Kakhovka dam in June had sharply increased the number of mines in the Black Sea. Russian forces had laid minefields in the Dnipro River, and the floodwaters carried many of them out to sea.
The Navy has set up a headquarters to plan the demining operation and is ready to begin at the first opportunity, he said. Ukraine hopes that NATO’s standing mine countermeasures group in the Mediterranean will eventually take part.
Minehunters in Britain
Two minehunters transferred to Ukraine, the Chernihiv and the Cherkasy, are in the United Kingdom, where their crews are training under a NATO programme. The ships have been partly modernised and are expected to be among the first used for demining.
However, the Montreux Convention, which Turkey enforces to bar warships from passing through the Bosphorus and Dardanelles in wartime, prevents them from reaching Ukraine for now. The same rules have stopped Russia from reinforcing its Black Sea Fleet.
“A maritime state”
Neizhpapa said Russia’s fleet can no longer approach within 100 nautical miles of Odesa. He said Ukraine needs many types of ships, including corvettes and urgently needed minehunters, and must become “a maritime state rather than a state by the sea.”
“We must have a fleet that will never again allow the aggressor even to plan an attack on Ukraine,” he said.
Sources
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