UK to provide Ukraine with navy ships

Britain’s Ministry of Defence plans to hand over two Royal Navy mine countermeasure vessels as part of a new maritime coalition

Britain will provide Ukraine with two mine-clearing navy vessels as part of a new maritime coalition, which also includes Norway, the country’s Ministry of Defence has announced. The new initiative is said to be long-term, aiming to make Kiev’s navy “more interoperable with NATO.”

Since the start of Russia’s military operation against the Western-backed regime in Kiev in February 2022, the UK has been one of Ukraine’s staunchest allies, providing its military with weapons and training. According to the ministry, London has already allocated some £4.6 billion ($5.7 billion) to this end.

In a statement released on Monday, the ministry said the “UK will lead a new Maritime Capability Coalition alongside Norway, delivering ships and vehicles to strengthen Ukraine’s ability to operate at sea.”

London will initially transfer two Sandown Class mine countermeasure vessels (MCMVs) from the country’s own Royal Navy fleet. The official announcement is expected to be made by Defence Secretary Grant Shapps later on Monday.

“These minehunters will deliver vital capability to Ukraine which will help save lives at sea and open up vital export routes,” he said earlier.

According to the ministry’s statement, London and Oslo are hoping to make the Ukrainian Navy “more compatible with Western allies, more interoperable with NATO.”

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Shapps added that the new maritime coalition would be launching several more initiatives aimed at ensuring an “enduring military commitment in support of Ukraine.”

Russia has repeatedly said that no amount of Western military support would change the course of the conflict. Moscow has also consistently warned that such shipments raise the risk of a direct confrontation between NATO and Russia.

The Russian Defense Ministry has on multiple occasions also pointed out that Ukraine had laid obsolete Soviet naval mines along its Black Sea coast, some of which have ended up floating in open waters after being de-anchored by storms. In a statement back in July, Russian military officials warned that stray Ukrainian ordnance had been found along shipping lanes in the northwestern area of the Black Sea.

“Incompetence and a lack of responsibility on the part of the Ukrainian Navy have led to a situation in which an unidentified number of mines are now drifting… in the Black Sea, posing a constant danger to navigation,” the statement read at the time.

According to estimates from the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) last spring, Kiev’s navy had planted at least 420 such mines since the start of the conflict.

In April 2022, the Turkish Defense Ministry said it had to dispatch elite underwater defense (SAS) diving teams to an area off the coast of Türkiye’s Izmir province after a floating mine was discovered. A little earlier, two apparent stray mines were destroyed near the Bosphorus Strait and in the vicinity of the nation’s border with Bulgaria. Around the same time, Romania reported a similar find near the nation’s Black Sea shore.

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has accused Russia of what he described as “creating the worst threat to international security since World War II” by laying mines as a “de facto weapon of indiscriminate action.”