Mines threaten ships and civilians off Ukraine's coast

DW (English)

After almost four years of war, the waters of the Black Sea off Ukraine are believed to be the world's most heavily mined. DW's Nick Connolly went out with a Ukrainian naval crew trawling for an explosive catch.

Transcript

00:00We're heading out into the open sea from Odessa, Ukraine's last major port not occupied by Russia.

00:06We can't show you the city or the port behind us. Odessa is already under near daily Russian attack.

00:12The Ukrainian military worries that any detail shown here could help direct those Russian strikes.

00:17This is currently one of the most dangerous stretches of water in the world and it's not just

00:22for the find. It is also because of down missiles, down drones, and trying to find those drones and

00:29destroy them before they do any damage to civilian ships before the beaches is the task of these

00:35Ukrainian soldiers here today. The team has just received the coordinates of an unidentified

00:42object sighted on the sea floor. They're sending a drone rather than a diver to investigate.

00:47Seafox is ready to launch. And we're ready as well.

00:58It looks like a piece of missile fuselage. You can see it's already covered with shells. I can tell it's

01:04part of a missile but we'll only be able to tell if it's still dangerous, whether there's still

01:09explosives in here, once we get the footage from the other camera.

01:12Today's catch doesn't need to be destroyed immediately. Experts back on land will review

01:20the footage and decide what to do.

01:22If you spend a few days in Odessa, you'll notice just how many air alerts we have here,

01:30how much there is flying over the city. There's so much down there. The Black Sea is the most heavily

01:36mine see in the world right now. Sometimes though, a mine or a downed missile has to be destroyed in a

01:43hurry. If it's a threat to a shipping lane, divers go down to perform a controlled detonation. The crew

01:50tell us they sometimes have to sacrifice a drone to carry out the kamikaze mission. But technology has

01:56yet to replace humans completely. Some missions still require divers and their know-how in spite of the risks.

02:02The danger for these divers isn't just from the mines and the missiles underwater.

02:07Right now the divers are having to wait because there is essentially a traffic jam out at sea.

02:11Many of the foreign ships heading for the port of Odessa are simply choosing to ignore the

02:15warnings that demining is going on in this part of the sea and are coming too close for the divers to

02:20do their job. This time it's a false alarm. Nothing dangerous, just scrap metal. Crew have to respond to

02:28any credible report of an unidentified object. Often enough, that ends up being a fridge or other

02:33rubbish brought in by the currents. And when they do find explosives, it's not just this war's mines

02:38they're clearing up. If we're still finding mines from World War II, and sometimes even from World War I,

02:47that tells you how many years of work we have ahead of us. If the war were to end tomorrow, the crew tell us,

02:57they'd likely still have another eight to ten years work ahead of them to clear the seas off Odessa.

03:01With no end to the war in sight, these crews and their work are here to stay.

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