{"id":232569,"date":"2025-07-02T17:40:14","date_gmt":"2025-07-02T17:40:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/232569\/"},"modified":"2025-07-02T17:40:14","modified_gmt":"2025-07-02T17:40:14","slug":"nato-forces-showcase-naval-support-for-ukraine-off-dorset-coast-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/232569\/","title":{"rendered":"Nato forces showcase naval support for Ukraine off Dorset coast"},"content":{"rendered":"

Joe Campbell & Curtis Lancaster<\/p>\n

BBC News<\/p>\n

\"BBCBBC<\/p>\n

The naval forces from Nato nations gathered off the coast of Portland, Dorset<\/p>\n

The Royal Navy and its Nato allies have been demonstrating their commitment to supporting Ukraine by showcasing and sharing their maritime capabilities.<\/p>\n

Exercise Sea Breeze 2025 took place off Portland in Dorset on Monday and featured ships from the UK, US, France, Belgium, Greece, Poland, and the Netherlands.<\/p>\n

Royal Navy Commodore Steve Banfield said: “The only way that navies can work together is by training together.”<\/p>\n

As part of the day, Ukrainian forces were trained to use modern vessels for clearing mines in areas like the Black Sea.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Cdre Banfield said: “The only way that navies can work together is by training together.”<\/p>\n

Cdre Banfield, who is the co-leader of the maritime capability coalition for Ukraine, added that there has been significant mining by both Russia and Ukraine during the conflict between the two countries.<\/p>\n

He said giving Ukrainian forces the capabilities to use the Mine Counter Measure vessels, which the Royal Navy use, will allow Ukrainian forces to clear the seas in a post-war world and help to “keep ships safe at sea”.<\/p>\n

He added that it is particularly vital to keep shipping lanes open as Ukraine is a significant global supplier of agricultural goods.<\/p>\n

Reflecting on the day of exercises, Cdre Banfield said: “So this is to hone the individual skills of the operators, to hone the skills of the battle staffs, to plan mine counter-measure operations but most importantly is for the navies of the world to be able to operate together so that when we do this for real in a combat situation, we have done this before.”<\/p>\n

He admitted that there is also much that the Nato forces can learn from Ukraine.<\/p>\n

‘Survival of the nation’<\/p>\n

“There are not many countries in the world that have real combat experience during the wartime,” said Commodore Dmytro Kovalenko, chief of the training command of the Ukrainian Navy.<\/p>\n

He added that training in safe waters off the coast of the UK is “very different” to the environment that the Ukrainian Navy is actually operating in.<\/p>\n

Describing the daily threat that his country faces, he said: “We are facing mostly unmanned systems threats, so our main task and our main focus is to protect our ships and port infrastructure against unmanned systems.”<\/p>\n

He added: “The whole nation, the whole country is a target and we are dealing with an adversary that has no restrictions at all.<\/p>\n

“We are struggling for survival of the nation.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Joe Campbell & Curtis Lancaster BBC News BBC The naval forces from Nato nations gathered off the coast…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":232570,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7654],"tags":[2000,299,657],"class_list":{"0":"post-232569","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ukraine","8":"tag-eu","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-ukraine"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114784870636686837","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232569","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=232569"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232569\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/232570"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=232569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=232569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=232569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}