ANKARA — Turkey, Ukraine and Bulgaria agreed to set up a trilateral mechanism to clear floating mines in the Black Sea amid warnings that Russia may use sea mines to target Ukraine shipments, the Turkish Defense Ministry announced Thursday.
“Operational procedures and the scope of the mechanism will be decided in meetings due to be held in the upcoming days,” a high-level Turkish Defense Ministry official told journalists, without elaborating further.
The ministry said the three-way mechanism was agreed on during Turkish Defense Minister Yasar Guler’s meeting with his Bulgarian counterpart Todor Tagarev and Romanian State Secretary for Defense Simona Cojocaru on Wednesday, on the sidelines of the NATO defense ministers summit in Brussels.
Guler also held separate meetings with his Ukrainian counterpart Rustem Umerov, British counterpart Grant Shapps and US counterpart Lloyd J. Austin on the sidelines of the summit.
The move comes a week after the United Kingdom warned last week that Russia might use sea mines to target Ukrainian civilian shipments to deter Kyiv from exporting its grain. Ukraine remains one of the biggest grain suppliers in the world.
In a statement last week, the British Foreign Office said that “the UK assesses Russia is seeking to target civilian shipping traveling through Ukraine’s ‘humanitarian corridor’ in order to deter the export of Ukrainian grain.”
Ukraine has been using a temporary humanitarian corridor for its civilian shipments since Russia withdrew from a key Black Sea grain deal in July. The deal, which was brokered by Turkey and the United Nations last year, allowed safe passage for ships carrying grain and other food products from Ukraine.
After Russia nixed the deal, several civilian cargo ships left Ukrainian Black Sea ports defying the Russian blockade in the Black Sea. Ships safely sailed through the waters of NATO members Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey before passing Turkey’s Bosporus and Dardanelles linking the Black and Mediterranean seas.
Ukraine Deputy Prime Minister Oleksandr Kubrakov said earlier this month that five new vessels were waiting to be loaded in Ukrainian ports to export almost 120,000 metric tons of Ukrainian grain to Africa and Europe.
Kyiv and Western capitals are reportedly working to set up an alternative corridor to ensure the safety of Ukrainian shipments, but Ankara has so far signaled reluctance to plans that would exclude Russia.
According to Aaron Stein, director of research at the Philadelphia-based Foreign Policy Research Institute, the mechanism doesn’t signal that Turkey was shifting away from its cautious approach in the Black Sea and in the broader Russia-Ukraine war.
“Turkey wants to ensure that the Black Sea NATO members, more or less, pursue policies that it approves of,” Stein told Al-Monitor, adding that Ankara “does not want to see Romania or Bulgaria sort of go rogue and be more aggressive. So they are keen to work in partnership, which is really a way to sign up these countries to a policy that they can live with.”
“Working in concert on mine clearance is entirely benign, so it doesn’t really impact Ankara’s policy toward Russia,” Stein said.
Turkey, which maintains a balancing act between Russia and the West, did not join Western sanctions against Russia. But it sealed off the Bosporus and Dardanelles to Russian warships in accordance with a founding treaty of the Turkish Republic that allows it to do so to maintain its neutrality in international conflicts.
Source : Al-Monitor
