Ukraine: Country tries to use Danube ports for export – 02/09/2023 – Market

Odessa is eerily silent in this sunny summer with hot days. The cacophony caused by the intense and constant movement of trucks, trains and workers left the city at the end of July, when Russia decided not to renew the agreement for the export of Ukrainian grains through the Black Sea.

With the port at a standstill, the silence in Odessa is now only broken by sirens announcing that another air strike could happen at any moment.

“I’m having trouble sleeping, I got used to the sound of the workers, the trucks, the loads”, says Dmytro Barinov, vice president of the Port of Odessa, in a large meeting room of a typical building built in the times of the Russian Empire , just a few meters from the staircase immortalized by Sergei Eisenstein in the movie “The Battleship Potemkin”.

“I’ve always lived near the port, I’ve always worked here, the silence makes everything very strange, disturbing, I would say.”

Until the beginning of the war, in February 2022, the port of Odessa concentrated more than two thirds of Ukrainian imports and exports and almost 100% of the 60 million tons of grain that annually left the farms around the Black Sea and along from the banks of the Dnipro River.

The only deep-water port in the country and also the only one capable of receiving Panamax-class ships, Odessa has been the port of departure for Ukrainian products since the end of the 18th century.

With the maritime blockade imposed by Russia since the beginning of the war, the port was only able to operate during the months in which the agreement negotiated by Turkey and the UN (United Nations) was in force, between June 2022 and July 2023.

“With the agreement we were able to export more than 30 tons of grain, around a thousand ships entered and left the port during this period”, says Barinov. “But now everything has stopped again, and Odessa feels the impacts of this, the city was born with the port, it is intrinsically linked to it.”

With the end of the agreement, Ukraine is now using its ports on the banks of the Danube, on the border with Romania, to sell production, which in this harvest should reach almost 60 million tons.

“It was a very good harvest, we had a warm winter and a spring with good rainfall,” explains Barinov. “The problem now is getting this production out of the country.”

With support from the United States and the European Union, Ukraine is expanding the port infrastructure at the Ismail complex on the banks of the Danube. But there are complex obstacles to be resolved, such as the draft and the size of the channels, which connect the ports to the delta of the river that flows into the Black Sea.

“In the last harvest we were able to send 11 million tons there and now we hope to reach 20 million tons in this harvest, but it is little if we compare it with our production and, mainly, our storage capacity.”

Since the end of the agreement, Russia has attacked the Ismail port facilities at least twice with relative success. Even just a few meters from the border with Romania —and the European Union—, the complex was hit by drones and missiles, and part of the port’s storage areas were destroyed.

On the roads that connect Odessa to the border with Romania, queues of bulk trucks are constant.

Without the capacity to process so much grain, truckers sometimes have to wait weeks to be able to unload.

“If your ship is close to sailing, hopefully in three days it will be possible to unload it,” says Anatoli, a veteran of the war in Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation of the Asian country who now makes the Odessa-Ismail route aboard his truck.

“But if your cargo isn’t committed to a specific shipment, we’re sometimes queued for two or three weeks,” he says, as he waits to reload at a transshipment point north of Odessa, in the small port town of Yuzhne.

Like all cities that were born and developed around Odessa, Yuzhne is deeply affected by the stoppage of port activities. Here, at least a third of the population has been out of work since the end of the agreement.

“It’s been difficult, we’ve had to distribute food, pay attention to these people who are not getting anything,” says Oksana Vorotnikova, responsible for administering support to civilians in the small town, moments before being interrupted by a new alarm.

“Let’s go to the shelter, now we become a target.”

The Russian decision to abandon the UN initiative to maintain a safe corridor for the export of grain also ended a tacit agreement of the war.

Cities like Yuzhne, Odessa, and others along this large bay were—or felt—protected from attack. There was a mutual interest in maintaining some normality and predictability in the port region.

“Now we are living the war again,” says Marina Plakhova, a teacher who left her home in the east of the country to seek more safety in Odessa. “We are no longer safe as we were, the attacks are constant now.”

Russian forces have attacked Odessa more violently and regularly since the end of the agreement, in particular targets linked to the infrastructure for exporting grains, such as port terminals or storage areas.

Last month, more than 20 drones and ballistic missiles were fired at the city. Ukrainian authorities said they shot down all but debris fell in different parts of Odessa, damaging buildings, houses and destroying one of the biggest supermarkets in southern Ukraine. At least five people were injured.

Even so, the days of strong sunshine, the heat and the calm waters of the Black Sea continue to attract hundreds of people to the few beaches in the city that have not been mined and are open to the public.

In Arcadia, a tourist complex a few kilometers from the port, children, young people, the elderly and adults had fun on a typical day at the beach, with floats, drinks by the sea and queuing to jump off a pier.

“It’s strange to look at the horizon and not see any ships, but at least the water is much cleaner,” says Stanislav Storozhenko, 21, before heading back to sea.

The afternoon was coming to an especially beautiful end when the sirens sounded again, announcing the possible arrival of another wave of drones. In the distance it was possible to hear the shots of the anti-aircraft batteries. Neither Stanislav nor anyone else in Arcadia seemed to mind.