The EU’s top diplomat has backed the idea of a Black Sea naval mission to protect grain ships from Russian drones – but this would require much more than Brussels’ existing Red Sea mission, while air policing might be more effective.
“The EU should send a mission to the Black Sea,” said EU foreign affairs chief Kaja Kallas in the European Parliament in Strasbourg on Tuesday (20 October).
“To protect merchant shipping, not to escalate, not to scare anyone, but to make sure that we will supply safely fuel, merchandise at normal prices, anything we need. This is how it should be,” she said.
Some “six attacks in 10 days by suspected Russian drones marks a dangerous and unacceptable escalation in the Black Sea,” Kallas added, with “rescuers
still searching for seven sailors missing after the drone attack on two tankers near Romania’s Black Sea coast”.
The Russian attacks were costing Ukraine €60m a day in lost exports of grain and fertiliser, Kallas also said.
And Russia had changed its tactics to start targeting people instead of cargo, said Sidharth Kaushal, from the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) defence think-tank in London.
“Before, they targeted ports, not civilians, or vessels at sea. They realised that threat to life is a much more effective deterrent to commercial shipping than threat to cargo,” he told EUobserver.
This article continues, but the full version is available only to EUobserver.com subscribers. Visit account.euobserver.com/membership