Turkish Defense Minister: Mines In Black Sea Are Russian-made, But Don't Know Which Country Spread Them

Illustration of a sea mine. (Wikimedia Commons/Aulo Aasmaa)

JAKARTA - The Turkish authorities ensured that they carried out an investigation related to sea mines that were carried by currents into their territory, precisely in the waters of the Black Sea, after previously successfully defusing one of the mines.

Defense Minister Hulusi Akar said Turkey had launched an investigation into the drifting of the Black Sea mines into their territory, but could not say how many there were and who was ready to deploy them.

"The mines in the Black Sea are Russian-made, but we don't know which country has distributed them, we can't identify them. Information in the media, there are about 400 mines in the Black Sea is still a mystery. We don't know the number," said Akar as quoted by Sputnik News, April 11th.

Turkey is in touch with Bulgarian and Romanian authorities on this issue, as both countries are carrying out clean-up work with Ankara, he added.

As previously reported, late last month Turkey managed to defuse a sea mine found in the Black Sea, near the border with Bulgaria.

Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar said at the time that he discussed the matter with representatives of Russia and Ukraine. Minister Akar also stated that after the incident, the Turkish Navy minesweeper was assigned to the region.

In March, Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) said that the Ukrainian military had installed about 420 mines at the entrances to the ports of Odesa, Ochakov, Chernomorsk, and Yuzhnoye since the start of Russia's military operations in the country. The FSB does not rule out the possibility of mine drifting into the Bosphorus Strait and further into the Mediterranean Sea.

In early April, Russia said that several mines that Ukraine had installed in the Black Sea were now 'loose', floating in the ocean and whose exact location was unknown, posing a threat to merchant ships.

The spokesman for the Russian Ministry of Defense, Major General Igor Konashenkov, said a dozen mines had been severed due to conditions not being able to withstand stormy weather and had floated south in the western part of the Black Sea.