ANKARA — Turkey, Romania and Bulgaria agreed to set up a trilateral mechanism to clear floating mines in the Black Sea amid warnings that Russia may use sea mines to target Ukraine shipments, the Turkish Defense Ministry announced Thursday.
“Operational procedures and the scope of the mechanism will be decided in meetings due to be held in the upcoming days,” a high-level Turkish Defense Ministry official told journalists, without elaborating further.
The ministry said the three-way mechanism was agreed on during Turkish Defense Minister Yasar Guler’s meeting with his Bulgarian counterpart Todor Tagarev and Romanian State Secretary for Defense Simona Cojocaru on Wednesday, on the sidelines of the NATO defense ministers summit in Brussels.
Guler also held separate meetings with his Ukrainian counterpart Rustem Umerov, British counterpart Grant Shapps and US counterpart Lloyd J. Austin on the sidelines of the summit.
