MOSCOW. March 31 (Interfax) - The Russian Defense Ministry has denied Kyiv's statement that Russian troops have installed mines in the Black Sea.
The old mines in the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov were installed by Ukrainian troops, some of those mines came off their anchors and their location is unknown, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said on Thursday.
"The remnants of the minesweeping forces of the Ukrainian Navy installed some 420 old YaM-1 sea anchor mines in the Black Sea and in the Sea of Azov, 370 in the Black Sea and 50 in the Sea of Azov, in the period between February 25 and March 4," Konashenkov said.
"As a result of storms in the Black Sea and due to the poor technical condition, the cables with seabed anchors holding some ten Ukrainian mines were torn. Since then, the Ukrainian mines have freely drifted in the western part of the Black Sea southward under the influence of wind and surface currents," he said.
One Ukrainian mine has recently been neutralized by Turkish sailors and the other was neutralized in the Romanian territorial waters, he said.
"No one can know where the remaining Ukrainian mines are now drifting," Konashenkov said.
The Ukrainian authorities have created "a direct mine threat to transport and cargo vessels of all Black Sea countries," he said.
The Ukrainian authorities are blocking 68 civilian vessels in ports, Konashenkov said.
"The Ukrainian authorities are now forcibly holding 68 vessels belonging to Turkey, China, Switzerland, Greece, Malta, Panama, the Marshall Islands, Sierra Leone, the Comoro Islands, Belize, Liberia, the Cayman Islands, Denmark, and Syria in the ports of the cities of Chornomorsk, Odesa, Mykolaiv, and Yuzhne," Konashenkov said.
Russia opens a safe corridor for these vessels to leave the territorial waters of Ukraine southwestward daily from 8:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. Moscow time, he said.
"However, the crews of these vessels told us during radio sessions that any departure of a foreign vessel from Ukrainian ports is prohibited by the Ukrainian authorities under the threat of immediate sinking," Konashenkov said.