On 11 June, a 50-year-old man entered the calm waters from a beach in the Ukrainian city of Odesa. Every weekend in the summer, he took a dip in the shallow sea and searched for sea snails, a local delicacy.
But on this occasion, he was not to return. A mine exploded, killing him instantly, as his family watched on in horror.
The Black Sea is infested with hundreds of mines dropped by both sides in Russia’s war on Ukraine, posing a serious threat to people and the reopening of the grain shipping routes halted by Moscow’s sea blockade.
“It’s truly a big problem,” said Vladlen Tobak, a former Ukrainian navy diving instructor and the founder of a diving school in Odesa. “These mines are there with other unexploded devices from the second world war, which we continue to find. The main concern is that we don’t know how many mines were dropped during the naval blockade. It will take a long time to clear the waters of these devices.”
Kyiv and Moscow have blamed each other for dropping mines in the Black Sea. The extent of the mining operations remains unknown, but Sergey Bratchuk, a spokesperson for the Odesa regional military administration, says between 400 and 600 mines were thrown into Ukraine’s sea zone by Russia.
In March, Russia’s defence ministry and state security agency, the FSB, warned against “floating Ukrainian mines off the coast of Odesa”, which had reportedly come adrift after a storm. According to Moscow, the Russian military has mapped out about 370 Ukrainian sea mines.
Some sea mines are designed to explode when the hull of a vessel comes into contact with them, and some are anchored to a steel cable to keep them under water. However, they can come loose in storms and drift long distances in sea currents.
Sea mines are not banned by international agreements, unlike landmines. However, international humanitarian law prescribes certain rules. For example, states can place them in their territorial waters to defend their coasts from external attacks. The Hague convention forbids the use of drifting mines in international waters.
In June, Ukraine admitted publicly to having “installed naval mines in the exercise of our right to self-defence as stipulated under article 51 of the UN charter”. The government simultaneously prohibited coastal bathing. But with temperatures reaching 35C (95F), many people are ignoring the restrictions and flocking to the beach.
Roman Kostenko, a member of Ukraine’s parliament and a Ukrainian special forces commander, confirmed to the Guardian: “We have mined the coast and some areas closer to the coast to prevent a Russian invasion from water. However, we don’t exactly know the extent and placement of Russian mines.”
The presence of sea mines is also posing a serious threat to other countries that border the Black Sea. Bulgarian officials warned citizens living near the coast to watch out for mines, while Romania is working to defuse devices found in its waters, according to reports. As for Turkey, at least two mines seem to have drifted to the coast, pushing Ankara to discuss the issue with Moscow and Kyiv.
On Friday, a floating anti-ship mine washed ashore in the Odesa region, the press service of the Ukrainian navy reported. “The defence forces found another floating anti-ship mine in the Black Sea near the shore in the Odesa region. The dangerous discovery was quickly defused by a naval unit of the armed forces of Ukraine,” it said on Facebook.
At least two Ukrainian men have died in sea mine explosions in recent weeks. “It’s not about the shockwave itself,” said Oleg Solokha, a former Ukrainian military diver. “When a mine explodes, even if you are not very close to it, you can lose consciousness or suffer a vertigo effect. You lose your spatial orientation and your mind doesn’t understand where’s up and where’s down. It’s very dangerous. You can easily drown because of it.”
It is still unclear which type of mines are floating in the Black Sea. A Ukrainian foreign ministry official told Reuters in March that 372 sea mines laid by Russia were of the “R-421-75” type, which were neither registered with nor used by Ukraine’s navy.
“There are different types of sea mine,” said Solokha. “There are contact mines and magnet mines, and modifications of those with vibro-sensors. In 99% of the cases, we just blow up the mines, because the older trinitrotoluene in a mine becomes unstable over time and can detonate on its own. Another reason they are detonated is that the activators (the spikes on the mine) are impossible to disconnect if the mine stays in the water too long.”
With the shifting tides and storms, the breakdown of anchored devices complicates mine-clearing attempts. Experts agree that it could take years to de-mine the Black Sea and any attempt to do so would be the most extensive since the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, a Ukrainian official said authorities are planning a de-mining sweep using robots, but that it would be months before it could be put into operation. Kostenko confirmed the existence of a de-mining plan, but said for now that it amounted to no more than an outline.
• This article was amended on 12 July 2022 to clarify that it is only some sea mines that are designed to explode when the hull of a vessel comes into contact with them, and only some that are anchored to a steel cable to keep them under water.
