Bulgaria, Romania, Türkiye to sign Black Sea demining agreement

Bulgaria, Romania and Türkiye will sign a memorandum of understanding to set up a naval group to tackle the increased mine threat in the Black Sea posed by Russia's war in Ukraine, the defence ministry in Sofia said on January 10.

The agreement will be signed in Istanbul on January 11, the Bulgarian defence ministry said in a press release, See News reports.

Türkiye initiated the creation of the Mine Countermeasures Naval Group in the Black Sea (MCM Black Sea) in August 2023 with the aim of ensuring the safety of shipping lanes. Bulgaria's government approved it in December.

In July, Russia withdrew from the one-year-old UN-Black Sea Grain Initiative, which had established safe sea lanes enabling exports of grains and ammonia from Ukrainian ports.

In October, the UK foreign office said that intelligence pointed to the potential threat of Russia using sea mines to target civilian shipping in the Black Sea in order to deter Ukrainian grain exports. Later in the same month, Bulgarian and Romanian ships began trawling Bulgarian and international waters on the route of the new Ukrainian sea corridor, Andrii Klymenko, head of the Institute of Black Sea Strategic Studies monitoring group, said in a social media post.