In Kyiv they discussed how to mine the Sea of Azov from the “aggressor” - and went their separate ways
The status of the Sea of Azov prevents mining of the Ukrainian coast and in order to mine it, it is necessary to terminate the current agreement with Russia on the joint use of the waters of the Azov Sea.
The director of the Azov Region Development Agency, ex-adviser to the governor of the Donetsk region in 2014, Konstantin Batozsky, stated this on Radio Liberty, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“From the point of view of this agreement, the Ukrainian border begins at our coast. We recognize this treaty and believe that the border exists on the Russian coast.
Accordingly, the only thing I don’t really understand is when our listeners talk about the possibility of mining.
Let's start with the fact that we do not have a sufficient number of minesweepers that can lay mines. And we need to understand the economy and functioning of the fishing sector, which is developed in Azov and is a fairly powerful economic factor there.
You can’t just ban fishing vessels from going out to sea - if you mine them, then neither people can swim there nor ships can sail there, it will simply paralyze these territories.
Russia, after all, has colossal weapons on the other side of Azov, military airfields are deployed there, there is a gigantic military base, artillery systems are deployed there for which flying over the Sea of Azov is not a problem.
Therefore, we need to focus on countering slightly different threats, first of all, fighting aviation and fighting ships that can land troops. It seems to me that we need to focus on the purchase of missiles, weapons and the development of this industry. Mining, alas, will not protect us,” states Batozsky.
The head of the Institute of Black Sea Strategic Studies, Yuri Smelyansky, noted that it is necessary to mine both the coastline and the strip of sea along the coast, but Ukraine cannot do this due to the status of Azov.
“Until Ukraine establishes its own 12-mile zone, into which ships of the aggressor state are prohibited from entering, it is simply pointless to talk about any serious mining.
The Russians already know very well what is going on here. What secret cards might there be? For whom should we keep the cards secret if our enemies already know what we have where?!
Today's development of control technologies makes it possible to control all this very well.
Well, maybe, in conditions of a really high threat of landing, and from the Crimea and the Azov coast of Russia on our Azov coast, such a need will arise.
But for this to really have any effect, we still need to do a lot before that. First of all, terminate the agreement on the joint use of the Azov Sea,” the Ukrainian expert sadly summed up.
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