Black Sea Once Again A Danger Zone
The Black Sea has become a danger zone for merchant ships as Russian forces invade the region and attack Ukraine’s exports.
After a full year without attacking any merchant ships, another attack yesterday marked the fourth merchant ship attacked by Russian forces in the Black Sea in less than a month.
In addition, Russia has doubled the number of warships in the Black Sea in recent days as it enters a new maritime phase on the 1,000th anniversary of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
On Monday, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrei Sifa condemned Russia’s missile attack on two ships in its southern port as a “deliberate terrorist strategy.”
“In just two days, Russian ballistic attacks destroyed two civilian cargo ships in Odessa…” Sifa wrote in “X.”
“This is a deliberate terrorist strategy. We must unite the forces of all responsible countries and organizations… to ensure freedom of navigation in the Black Sea and global food security,” he added.
According to the Ministry of Infrastructure in Kyiv, Russia attacked a ship loaded with Ukrainian grain with a ballistic missile yesterday, killing one person and injuring five people.
The Palau-flagged Far East was damaged in a regional port in Odessa shortly after docking to load.
Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister Oleksiy Kuleba said Russia was “trying to destroy shipping in the Black Sea while ensuring food security.”
On Sunday, another cargo ship carrying Ukrainian export grain was damaged during a Russian missile attack in the Odesa region. Russia has accused Saint Kitts and Nevis-flagged Parissa of transporting arms to Ukraine, a claim denied by Kyiv. Ukrainian authorities said yesterday that the ship was carrying 6,000 tons of corn.
Last month, two other attacks damaged commercial ships, including one off the Romanian coast, drawing strong condemnation from Bucharest.
Since the collapse of the UN-brokered Black Sea Grain Initiative in July 2023, Ukraine has been able to establish an export corridor that allows ships to leave the ports of Odesa, Chornomorsk, and Yuzhny, cross the Danube, or bypass the Bulgarian and Romanian coasts to access global markets.
Before these latest strikes, Ukrainian grain exports were at their fastest pace since the start of the conflict with Russia.
As of September 11 this year, there had been no merchant ship strikes in the region for the entire year, and traffic along this export corridor exceeded previous UN editions.
Analysis of the Primar Corridor shows a significant change in the age profile of Black Sea grain exports, with older ships dominating.
The share of bulk carriers older than 20 years has risen from around 15% in 2020 to more than a third this year, with the majority being small artisanal vessels of 20,000 to 34,900 tonnes and larger Panamax ships.
In contrast, the market share of bulk carriers less than ten years old has fallen from nearly half in 2020 to just 10% over the past five years.
It is also worth noting that in the region’s dry bulk trade, after disappearing from the map during the first year and a half of the massive invasion, Ukraine’s iron ore exports via sea routes (mainly Capesizes) have been increasing significantly, with a clear recovery in 2024. In the first nine months of this year, Ukraine exported about 11.27 million tons, accounting for nearly 424% of the total exports in 2023 and 315% of the total exports in 2022.
Despite Russia’s more aggressive behavior in the Black Sea in recent weeks, Ukraine has not backed down and continues to carry out its naval operations. In recent days, Ukraine has damaged Russian minesweepers stationed in the Kaliningrad exclave while setting fire to oil reserves in the Feodosia region of the Crimean Peninsula. The Feodosia terminal, which was also attacked in March this year, is the largest in Crimea for handling oil products, and there is only one such terminal in Sevastopol.
