Ukraine will have to clear four hundred mines in the Black Sea. This will require up to five years of time and the help of other Black Sea countries.
This was stated during a briefing by the speaker of the Naval Forces of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, captain of the third rank Dmitry Pletenchuk, the Ukrinform agency reports.
Ahead of us lies a serious operation to clear mines from the Black Sea – that’s four hundred mines,” he emphasized.
According to Pletenchuk, demining at sea is very different from demining on land:
- on land there is only one plane and two coordinates, while in the sea there are three, because there is still depth;
- on land, mines are in a static position, but at sea the situation is dynamic – if a storm tears a mine off its frame, it begins to drift and can move along the bottom;
- Due to the explosion by the Russians of the Kakhovka hydroelectric station, in addition to sea mines, anchor river mines, anti-landing mines, and ordinary mines fell into the waters of the Dnieper-Bug estuary and the Black Sea, with which both banks of the Dnieper were mined.
According to him, demining will take place in several phases, the main of which can last up to five years.
- The first phase of the mine action operation will last from three to seven months – this is the demining of ship moorings and ports. The Kherson and Nikolaev ports still remain blocked, in particular due to the mine danger and Russian control of the Kinburn Spit;
- Then the main phase of demining most of the sea will continue for three to five years.
Pletenchuk expressed hope for the participation of Ukraine’s partner countries in the Black Sea region in mine clearance, noting that such cooperation is already taking place.
All these explosive objects end up on the Romanian, Bulgarian shores, the Turkish Strait and even the Georgian coast. So we hope that some kind of mine action group will join in the demining,” Pletenchuk noted.
He noted that there are two such groups in Europe – in the Baltic and in the Mediterranean.
We hope that our partners – Romania, Bulgaria, Türkiye, Georgia – will take part in a full-scale mine clearance operation. Now we already have interaction and cooperation regarding the training of specialists who carry out mine clearance every day. These teams are constantly working, checking the fairways,” he said.
Source: Ukrinform
Source: Racurs
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