Bulgaria, Romania and Turkey signed an agreement on the establishment of the Black Sea Naval Mine Countermeasures Group (MSM Black Sea). MCM Black Sea activities will be exclusively peaceful.
This was reported by the Ministry of Defense of Bulgaria.
After the final approval of the document at the national level by the participating countries, the planning of MSM Black Sea activities will begin. After that, the mine action team will be involved in the actual tasks — this process can take up to several months.
At the initial stage, only the ships of the member countries of the union will participate in the anti-mine group. The mine threat will be eliminated exclusively in the territorial waters and economic zones of the member countries of the group. The initiative of the three countries aims to make shipping safer, in particular for ships transporting grain from Ukraine.
The executive body for decision-making, management, consultation and general management of mine countermeasure operations will be the Committee of the Naval Mine Countermeasure Group in the Black Sea, consisting of the commanders of the navies of the three participating countries. This minesweeping force will not be considered a NATO operation, but will be the first major joint action of the Black Sea allies since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
- Since the start of the Russian invasion, the Romanian, Bulgarian and Turkish militaries have regularly defused mines drifting in their waters in the Black Sea. In October, Bloomberg wrote that the countries are discussing a joint project on demining the sea. The project itself is not a NATO operation.