The Romanian military on March 28 neutralized a stray naval mine discovered roughly 43 miles offshore in the Black Sea, the defense ministry said.
Romania shares a border along the Black Sea with Bulgaria, Turkey, and Ukraine, which was invaded by Russian forces on Feb. 24.
Defense ministry officials announced on Twitter that Romanian military soldiers destroyed the explosive device using a high-velocity shaped charge and remote detonation.
Photos shared alongside the statement showed the mine adrift in the water as officials sought to remove it from the sea using a net. A separate photo appears to show it being detonated, sending thick plumes of smoke and water up into the air.
H.I. Sutton, a defense analyst and writer who specializes in submarines and subsurface systems, said on Twitter that the mine was likely similar to that which was discovered in Turkey on March 26—a Soviet-era design, “YaM, or MYaM. Old but simple and deadly,” he wrote.
Sutton described it as a “moored contact mine” that was designed for use in rivers and inshore.
The Epoch Times has been unable to verify the exact description of the naval mine.
This is the third time in recent days that a stray naval mine has been discovered in foreign waters. On March 28, a military diving team deactivated a stray self-contained explosive device off Turkey’s northwest coast, Turkey’s defense ministry announced.
Igneada is a small town within the district of Demirköy in Turkey’s Kırklareli Province, which borders Bulgaria.
Prior to that, a separate stray mine was deactivated in İstanbul’s Bosporus on March 26, forcing authorities to briefly suspend marine traffic in the waterway.
The mine was later defused, Turkey’s Defense Minister Hulusi Akar said in a televised statement. Akar said the mine was first discovered by fishermen in the northern Bosporus and described it as an old type of mine.
The country’s defense minister said he was in communication with both Russian and Ukrainian authorities regarding the discovery.
Authorities have also informed Turkish ships that regularly operate on the busy waterway of the potential threats posed by the drifting marine mines in the Black Sea.
“The mine, determined to be an old type, was neutralized by our team ... and naval forces continue their vigilant work,” Akar said.
The discovery of the latest mine comes after Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) warned that a number of naval mines were allegedly placed in the Black Sea by Ukrainians in an effort to counter Moscow’s invasion, and that the mines have been detached from their anchors, meaning they could drift toward the Bosporus and the Mediterranean Sea.
FSB said that Ukrainian naval forces had placed lines of mines—made in the first half of the 20th century by the Soviet Union—near the ports of Odessa, Ochakov, Chernomorsk, and Yuzhny, reported state-run news agency TASS.
But Andrii Klymenko, co-founder and chief editor of BlackSeaNews.net and head of the Monitoring Group of the Black Sea Institute of Strategic Studies, called the Russian claims “dangerous disinformation from the enemy side.”
In a social media post translated from the original Ukrainian, Klymenko accused Russia of placing the mines along the recommended routes from the Bosporus to Odessa and then blaming Ukraine.
Klymenko said he believes Russia’s warning is to prevent commercial shipping in the Black Sea.
