Search for 16 sailors from sunken Sloviansk and Stanislav boats: how international partners can influence the process

The families of the sailors of the sunken Sloviansk and Stanislav boats have been searching for their relatives for over two years and are trying to find information about their fate from various sources. However, despite appeals to international organizations, in particular the ICRC, and requests to the aggressor country, the official whereabouts of missing sailors haven’t been established. Currently, foreign partners can influence the situation, particularly, by facilitating access to sunken boats in order to establish whether there are bodies of Ukrainian sailors on them.

This topic was talked about during the discussion at Media Center Ukraine.

Olesia Aulina, Head of the United by the Sea NGO, wife of the missing Commander of the patrol boat Sloviansk Damir Aulin, noted that Ukraine is currently asking for an examination of the sunken ships. Therefore, in her opinion, third countries should be involved.

“In order to understand and establish whether there are bodies on the boats, we need to thoroughly examine them. And today there is a very big safety problem. Sending search and rescue teams to thoroughly investigate the site with the necessary technical equipment requires some kind of a ceasefire to ensure their safety. Currently, we cannot achieve this unilaterally. Therefore, we need to attract the help of third countries to solve this issue, or create a working group that would be able to conduct the negotiation process,” she explained.

It is possible to launch such a search mission within the framework of several international initiatives: NATO’s trilateral initiative on demining the Black Sea and the Maritime Coalition, led by the UK and Norway.

“Last year, a trilateral agreement on demining the Black Sea was made between three NATO countries – Türkiye, Romania and Bulgaria. We believe that it can be used to establish cooperation and organize the search mission to our boats, in order to examine not only the boat itself, but also the surrounding area. And also, we have established a Maritime Coalition with the UK and Norway, and we believe that there is also a chance to use these agreements or work in this direction, so that the workers of these countries will help us to solve the issue of the examination, and the search mission to our boats,” she noted.

As reported, in spring 2022, two Ukrainian military boats, the Sloviansk and Stanislav, were sunk in the Black Sea following missile attacks by russian forces. The Sloviansk went down on March 3, 2022, near the Kinburn and Tendra spits, 2 km from shore, marking the first combat loss of the Ukrainian Navy during russia’s full-scale invasion. The Stanislav sank on May 7, 2022, 20 meters from Snake Island, lying at a depth of about 20 meters.

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