Unfortunately, naval mines continue to be a weapon of choice in modern warfare, and the Ukrainian conflict is no exception.
This week it has been revealed that an increasingly desperate Ukrainian military has laid naval mines in the Black Sea in an effort to deter any Russian ships from coming near the coast near Odessa.
This has posed a grave risk to civilians and commercial shipping vessels, as well as fishing vessels, as these mines are designed to destroy or damage any ships they come in contact with.
In this case, the Ukrainian military is intending to prevent Russian naval forces from accessing the operationally significant sea areas around the port of Odessa. But their actions now risk spilling over towards the busy Mediterranean shipping lanes.
Al Mayadeen reports…
On Saturday, Russia warned that mines that the Ukrainians had planted in the Black Sea against Russia could drift as far as the Strait of Bosphorous and the Mediterranean Sea.
“After the start of the Russian special military operation, Ukrainian naval forces had deployed barriers of mines around the ports of Odessa, Ochakov, Chernomorsk and Yuzhny,” said the FSB security service in a statement, noting that the mines are “dilapidated” and were manufactured in the first half of the 20th century.
Storms in the western Black Sea have slashed the cables of some of the mines free-floating in the area, as they were pushed by wind and currents.
Given the direction of the currents “the floating of the mines toward the Bosphorus and then on to the Mediterranean is not excluded.”
Russia has blocked Ukraine’s access to the Black Sea since February 24 when it launched its military operation in Ukraine.
In parallel, on February 27, Turkey closed the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles to Russian warships.
Ukraine’s use of mines in evacuation procedures
The director of operations at the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said that a road designated as a humanitarian corridor out of Ukraine’s Mariupol turned out to be mined.
During a BBC morning show, Dominik Stillhart said the International Committee of the Red Cross was leading a convoy of displaced Ukrainian civilians out of the southern port city on Sunday. He did not specify which faction was suspected of mining the route.
“Our people were leading that convoy. They arrived at the first checkpoint only to realize that the road they were supposed to take was actually mined,” Stillhart stressed.
Furthermore, he added that the health aid charity is in talks with Russia and Ukraine to organize military-to-military talks and agree on roads and times for evacuations, “otherwise it will be difficult… to facilitate the agreement.”
Russia announced several times opening humanitarian corridors to allow civilians to be evacuated from several Ukrainian cities amid the fighting, including the capital Kiev and Mariupol.
READ MORE UKRAINE NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Ukraine Files
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