A joint minesweeping task force from the Bulgarian and Romanian navies has begun operating in the Black Sea along Ukraine’s recently established commercial shipping lane, Andriy Klymenko, head of the Institute for Strategic Black Sea Studies and Editor-in-Chief of BlackSeaNews, said in a Facebook post on Oct. 19.
The announcement came on the same day that a cargo ship stranded in the Odesa port became the first to venture into the turbulent waters of the Black Sea despite Moscow’s threats to treat vessels in the area as hostile.