Black Sea Should Attract Tourists, Not Warships - Bulgarian Prime Minister

Fahad Shabbir (@FahadShabbir) Published December 07, 2018 | 07:01 PM

Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borissov said on Friday that the Black Sea should attract tourists rather than warships and warned that the possible deployment of military vessels in the sea would lead to a serious crisis.

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 07th December, 2018) Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borissov said on Friday that the Black Sea should attract tourists rather than warships and warned that the possible deployment of military vessels in the sea would lead to a serious crisis.

Earlier in the week, media reported that the United States was preparing for sailing its warships into the Black Sea in light of a standoff between Russia and Ukraine in the Kerch Strait. Meanwhile, US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Joseph Dunford said that Washington was not considering the possibility of a military response.

"I have always considered that the Black Sea should be a place for tourism, for gas pipelines, ferries. The entry of ships ... will inevitably lead to a major crisis," Borissov said as quoted by Sofia Globe newspaper.

He recalled that at the moment there were no military vessels in the Black Sea and warned that if it changed Bulgaria's tourism as well as regional energy projects would be affected.

On November 25, three ships of the Ukrainian Navy Berdyansk, Nikopol, and Yany Kapu illegally crossed the Russian border, entered Russian territorial waters that were temporarily closed, and began moving toward the Kerch Strait, which serves as an entrance into the Sea of Azov. The Ukrainian vessels and their crew were detained by Russia after failing to respond to a lawful demand to stop.

Following the incident, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko signed a decree declaring a 30-day period of martial law in several Ukrainian regions located near the Russian border and the coasts of the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that the incident was a provocation prepared in advance as a pretext to introduce martial law in Ukraine ahead of the country's presidential election. The martial law would affect the campaign, set to start in late December, amid Poroshenko's low approval rating, Putin said.