Crews and ships trapped
The Russian invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022 had a profound impact on shipping in the Black Sea. To prevent the Russian navy from entering their harbours and attempting to capture them in a coup d'état, Ukrainian tugboats and naval support vessels mined the waters along the coast of the Gulf of Odessa.
This was a trap for many ships. Examples include the bulk carrier MV Riva Wind, registered in the Marshall Islands, and the COSCO container ship Joseph Schulte, sailing under the Hong Kong flag. The problem was getting vital raw materials out of the port of Odessa.
Turkey and Romania have started to search for the mines.
What we Central Europeans have so far supposedly been unaware of is that both Ukraine and Russia are important exporters of maize and wheat and therefore important food suppliers around the world. Every conflict jeopardises the supply of raw materials worldwide.
While many focussed on the land war, securing the northern shore of the Sea of Azov between the Crimea and the Donbas was of crucial importance to the Russians. Shipping and internal trade via the Don, from the Caspian Sea via the Don-Volga Canal, but also the entire deep-water system of European Russia, which connects not only the Black and Caspian Seas, but also the Baltic Sea and the White Sea, are important for Russian trade.
The ships are currently travelling through the Sea of Azov in a Russian naval convoy, with their AIS transponders switched off to conceal them from Ukrainian forces. But is there any evidence that Ukraine has ever threatened this trade route? This is another aspect of the Kremlin's paranoid narrative!
What can the world do?
If the harbours in the Odessa region on the other side of the Black Sea are not opened either, this will be a declaration of war on global food security. And it could lead to famine, destabilisation and mass migration around the world.
The ships stuck in the harbours along the Gulf of Odessa, both in the Ukrainian and Russian-occupied areas, cannot return home, they have not moved for months. Many are in need of repairs. Should the major nations of the world negotiate with Turkey to relax the Montreux Convention and allow them to sail military units through the Turkish Straits and protect civilian shipping as it enters Ukrainian ports along the Gulf of Odessa?
Russians are the winners of the food crisis
NATO and the US Maritime Administration have issued recommendations on the situation in and around the Black Sea, but these are outdated and contain only limited information on the development of the situation. The greatest threat is posed by mines laid by either the Ukrainians or the Russians, which break free from their moorings and drift towards the Turkish Straits or the mouth of the Danube.
AIS tracking shows that a growing fleet of ships is anchored in Romanian waters, but only 15 to 25 miles south-west of Snake Island. Following the sinking of the "Moskva" and the Ukrainian attacks against the Russian position on Snake Island, the threat to bulk carriers and tankers waiting to enter the Danube south of the border between Ukraine and Romania has grown alarmingly.
Moldovan "Millenial Spirit" set on fire; Photo: MoD Ukraine
The Russians still have a large fleet in the Black Sea, including five Kilo-class submarines. In addition, the Russians have established a surveillance line in the Gulf of Odessa from Snake Island to Crimea by deploying several jack-up rigs and seizing Ukrainian oil platforms in order to monitor all incoming and outgoing ships.
Paradoxically, the Russian offensive has made them the biggest beneficiaries of the food crisis they have caused. As world market prices for wheat have risen by 50 %, Moscow has been able to realise revenues of 1.9 billion dollars from export taxes. The massive drop in Ukrainian exports has prompted some European leaders to push for ships to be escorted in the Black Sea, or for grain to be diverted via other ports.
The latter is currently only happening to a limited extent, as the different gauge of the railways between Ukraine and Europe, the capacity utilisation of the Ukrainian ports on the Danube and the sheer volume of grain to be transported are causing problems. It is estimated that of the 6 million tonnes of grain that are normally exported by sea, only 1 to 1.5 million tonnes are currently transported abroad; this does not include the volume that has been taken over and shipped from Russia.
Sources: Salvatore Mercogliano, Alexander Gillespie, Pavel Polityuk, Felix Hoske, Stefaniia Bern, Natalia Drozdiak, Rosalind Mathieson, Kitty Donaldson, Gotev, Thomson Reuters 2022, Bloomberg, Euractiv
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