NATO should play a bigger role in security in the Black Sea, and integrate Ukraine's air and missile defences with those of alliance members, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said on Thursday.
The Black Sea and its Ukrainian coast have been crucial theatres of war since Russia's invasion of Ukraine last year.
"The Black Sea is instrumental for making the whole of Europe peaceful and future-oriented," Kuleba, speaking via video link, told a Black Sea security conference in Romanian capital Bucharest.
"Sadly, it is also a showcase of how rapidly things can deteriorate if one neglects threats. It's time to turn the Black Sea into what the Baltic Sea has become, a sea of NATO."
The remarks were brushed aside in Moscow, where Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told a briefing: "The Black Sea can never be a NATO sea."
He added: "This is a shared sea, it must be a sea of cooperation, interaction and security for all its littoral states. And this security is indivisible."
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