Kyiv calls for NATO to secure Black Sea and integrate Ukrainian defences

NATO should play a bigger role in security in the Black Sea, and integrate Ukrainian air and missile defences with those of its allies, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitro Kuleba said on Thursday.
“The Black Sea is instrumental for making the whole of Europe peaceful and future-oriented,” Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmitro Kuleba, speaking via video link, told a Black Sea security conference in the Romanian capital Bucharest.
The Black Sea and its Ukrainian coast have been crucial theatres of war since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year.
Both Moscow and Kyiv rely on the sea for exports including supplying world grain markets. A Russian blockade of Ukrainian ports threatened to cause global famine last year until the United Nations and Turkey brokered an agreement to keep ports open, still the focus of intense diplomacy.