Ukraine promotes in Bucharest idea of permanent patrolling of Black Sea by NATO countries
This was stated by First Deputy Foreign Minister Emine Dzheparova on the air of the national telethon "United News", Ukrinform reports.
She stated that after the illegal annexation of Crimea by Russia in 2014, the EU and NATO countries did not have a clear vision of security challenges in the Black Sea-Azov region, and now it is time to correct these mistakes.
"Our call is to work together to develop this strategic vision. The second is regional cooperation not only among the Black Sea countries. We are currently thinking about the modality of such cooperation. It is clear that in times of war it may be limited. But we believe that there should be a permanent presence of NATO countries in the Black Sea basin. It could be a joint patrol, it could be mine clearance as a joint task in the Black Sea waters," Dzheparova said.
She added that Ukrainian diplomacy is promoting these two tasks at the forum - a vision and concrete actions.
Commenting on the perception of the idea of patrolling by such Black Sea NATO member states as Romania and Turkey, Dzheparova noted that since this is the first Black Sea Security Forum, we may not get answers to our questions today.
"But that's how the world works: you set a theme, a narrative, a vision, and then after a while it is implemented. It seems to me that Ukraine is a world champion in very fast "space" progress of tasks that no one could have imagined," the First Deputy Minister said.
As Ukrinform previously reported, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said at the opening of the Black Sea Security Conference in Bucharest that the Black Sea should become what the Baltic Sea has become - a NATO sea - and a comprehensive security system should be developed for all countries in the region.
