ANKARA, April 10. /TASS/. Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar said on Sunday he doesn’t rule out that that drifting mines appeared in the Black Sea with an intent to exert pressure on Ankara to make it allow the passage of NATO warships via the Bosporus.
"We suspect that mines appeared there intentionally. Probably, they were released as part of a plan aiming at exerting pressure on us to let NATO’s mine sweepers into the Black Sea [via the straits]. But we are committed to the rules of the Montreux Convention and will not allow warships enter the Black Sea, neither will we let the Black Sea be dragged into the war," CNN Turk quoted him as saying.
According to Akar, the Turkish side is probing into the issue of drifting mines in the Black Sea. He noted that their exact number is not known while the media say there are some 400 such mines. "We don’t know who placed them. We know that they were made in Russia but we are probing into which country placed them," he said.
Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) said on March 19 that the mines placed by the Ukrainian side at the approaches to Black Sea ports might be drifting toward the Bosporus. Three drifting mines were spotted and destroyed off Turkey’s coast in late March and early April.