Last week the president of the main Ukrainian farmers’ association, Leonid Kozachenko, he announced that grain exports from Black Sea ports have almost reached pre-war levels. «In the past we exported around 7.5-8 million tons of food per month – said Kozachenko – Today we have almost reached this level».
These numbers show that Russia’s attempts to embargo Ukrainian Black Sea ports have failed. After a series of catastrophic defeats the Russian fleet was forced to retreat to a series of bases across the sea, too far away to seriously interfere with Ukrainian commercial traffic.
While the ground front is stuck in a stalemate and the war in the skies of Ukraine continues without a clear winner, it is on the Black Sea that Kiev’s armed forces have managed to achieve their main success for over a year. It is a particularly surprising result considering that Ukraine is a nation without a real war fleet.
Because it is important?
With more than 2,700 kilometers of coastline that served more than half of the country’s exports and a quarter of its imports before the large-scale invasion, Ukraine is a nation that depends on maritime trade for its survival. Long underestimated even by analysts, the war for control of the Black Sea is revealing itself in recent weeks increasingly central. Zelensky himself announced in his interview of the end of the year with the weekly Economist that the Black Sea is destined to become the “center of gravity of the conflict” during 2024.
There are very good reasons to explain this situation. With the land battle now turning into an endurance contest, sea exports are generating revenue that the Ukrainian government desperately needs to continue funding the conflict. The ability to keep routes open in the face of Russian opposition is also important for Ukraine’s future. It means that in a post-conflict scenario, the Russians will not have the ability to block Ukrainian trade routes at will, making the Ukrainian economy potentially sustainable even in the absence of a complete Russian defeat which, at the moment, appears increasingly unlikely.
It was a situation difficult to imagine two years ago, when at the beginning of the invasion the powerful Russian Black Sea fleet imposed a total blockade of Ukrainian ports. In those days, Russian rule was so uncontested that warships could approach within a few kilometers of the city of Odessa and hit it with their cannons.
In July 2022 the famous grain agreement, negotiated between Russia and Ukraine with the mediation of Turkey, allowed a partial recovery of Ukrainian exports. But a year later, Russia’s unilateral withdrawal from the agreement and the announcement of the imposition of an embargo had raised fears of the worst. Cereal prices on international markets had increased for a few weeks, but soon began to fall again and now, for Ukrainians, the situation has even improved.
With 5.4 million tonnes exported last December, the volume of food products leaving Black Sea ports exceeded the volume of exports achieved a year earlier, while the grain agreement was in force. Currently, 16 ships per day on average arrive or depart from Odessa and the Ukrainian ports on the Danube River, which have become one of the country’s main commercial traffic hubs, compared to an average of eight ships when the grain deal was in force. Despite announcements and threats, the Russian fleet was no longer able to reinstate its embargo.
UkriCor Update 17Jan2024
Ships Inbound 567
Ships in Odesa 59
Ships Outbound from Odesa 515
Ships Outbound, Not Delivered 176
Ships Outbound, Delivered 333
Ships Outbound, Unknown Status 5🧵⬇️ #UkriCor #agriculture #GrainfromUkraine #BlackSeaGrain #BSGI pic.twitter.com/KbtmVcCHrz
— exit266 (@exit266) January 18, 2024
Victory without a fleet
Since the Ukrainians scuttled their main warship in the first days of the invasion to prevent it from falling into Russian hands, Ukraine has lacked a real navy, while the Russian Black Sea fleet is made up of dozens of warships, submarines, planes and missiles.
This situation, however, did not prevent the Ukrainians from achieving their first victories at sea while the Russian naval blockade was still in operation. On April 2, 2022, a shore-launched Ukrainian anti-ship missile damaged the Russian frigate Admiral Essen. Ten days later, another missile sank the cruiser Moskwa, the flagship of the Black Sea Fleet, used as a command center to coordinate naval blockade operations.
«Already in April 2022 we managed to transform the 25 thousand square kilometers of the north-western Black Sea into a gray zone, where the Russian fleet cannot approach», he said a few days ago the commander of the Ukrainian fleet, Vice Admiral Oleksiy Neizhpapa, in a long interview in which he reconstructed the various phases of the conflict at sea.
Since then, Ukrainian victories have followed one after another. After weeks of raids and bombings, on June 30 the Russians were forced to abandon Snake Island, located 35 kilometers from the mouth of the Danube, a strategic point for Ukrainian commercial traffic.
In October the Ukrainians began using a new weapon: marine drones, small remotely controlled boats loaded with explosives, sometimes partially submerged and therefore very difficult to detect. On several occasions, Ukrainian drones managed to sneak into the Crimean port of Sevastopol, Russia’s main base in the Black Sea, and damage ships operating on the high seas.
Other successes came thanks to long-range missiles supplied to Ukraine by its allies. Last September two British-made Storm Shadow missiles destroyed a landing ship and a submarine anchored in the port of Sevastopol. A few days later Sevastopol suffered a new attack, the most spectacular and politically significant since the sinking of the Moskwa, when a series of Ukrainian missiles damaged the Russian fleet headquarters located in the city.
According to the Ukrainians, in nearly two years of fighting about 20 percent of the Russian Black Sea fleet has been sunk or damaged. Last December 17, satellite images revealed that most of the Russian fleet had abandoned Sevastopol, moving to the port of Novorossiysk, on the eastern shore of the Black Sea. According to the images released by Ukrainian partisans operating in Crimea, very few old women remained in Sevastopol ships, continually moved from one pier to another for fear of new attacks.
🇷🇺BSF: NOVOROSSIYSK🇷🇺
0.5M📸 from 17 Dec 2023. FINALLY a look at Novorossiysk. Loads of vessels and boats in port:
4 of 4 KILOs (636.3 / 877V)
4 of 4 Pr. 22160s (including TOR Mounted)
2 of 2 Grigorovich
3 of 3 Pr. 21631
1 of 3 Karakurt
3x Ropucha
1x Ivan Gren
3x Natya Class pic.twitter.com/HRGtckKZwP— MT Anderson (@MT_Anderson) December 17, 2023
The consequences
Faced with this series of reverses, the Russians tried to react. Last summer hundreds of missiles and drones were launched against Ukrainian ports on the Black Sea and the Danube, in an attempt to damage the complex infrastructure that allows grain to be loaded onto commercial ships, while planes and helicopters continued to drop naval mines along the main trade routes.
These attacks have caused widespread damage and damaged several vessels, but have so far failed in their main objective: to cause such an increase in insurance prices for ships bound for Ukraine that shipping traffic is uneconomical. Currently, the price to insure a cargo bound for Ukraine is around 1.25 percent of the value of the cargo, down from 7 percent at the start of the conflict.
One of the main explanations for this situation is the military success of the Ukrainians, which has made maintaining a naval blockade too dangerous, which would put Russian ships within range of Ukrainian missiles and drones.
But there are also other factors, such as agreements between the Ukrainian and UK governments which have allowed the cost of insurance premiums to be lowered through a series of state guarantees. Furthermore, the new routes through the port of Odessa and the Ukrainian ports on the Danube largely pass through the national waters of Romania and Bulgaria, NATO countries that Russia does not want to hit.
Finally there are diplomatic considerations. Not being able to physically stop commercial ships, Russia has only one choice to implement its blockade: hit them with planes or missiles from a safe distance. But this risks generating tensions and diplomatic incidents with the nations that own the ships, a path that for the moment the Russian government does not seem willing to take (ships bound for Ukraine often fly the flag of NATO countries, as well as states close to Russia , such as Turkey and China).
There is no guarantee that this situation will continue. As he wrote trading expert Andrey Sizov, many expected Russia to be more decisive in blocking Ukrainian trade, “but this, for now, has not happened.” In the future, the Russian fleet may attempt to increase the number of mines in Ukrainian waters, or it may decide to directly target some commercial ships, risking serious diplomatic consequences, but, potentially, causing a catastrophic increase in the price of insurance.