The one thing the world knew in July was that Russia’s termination of the UN-brokered Black Sea grain deal would see Ukrainian exports almost completely end, and leave its ports idle.
There was only one great naval power on the Black Sea. Everyone knew that. How on earth could Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his ministers, despite their fighting rhetoric, change that reality?
Wrong. Badly wrong. Ships are once again carrying Ukrainian food exports and at some scale. Given that the country is a key global supplier, not least for the world’s poorest, and we can measure its success through international market prices.
When its exports slump, food prices soar. Wheat prices spiked when Russia’s all-out invasion began. They reached around $1,160 per bushel in March 2022; peaked again at $760 in July, when the deal ended; and are now well below $600.
So what happened?
Two things. The first was a brave, seemingly foolhardy decision, to encourage shipping to run the blockade despite the risk that the Kremlin would seize or sink such vessels. The other was a startlingly successful Ukrainian campaign against Russia’s Black Sea Fleet.
Even though Ukraine is sometimes thought of as a landlocked country, it has a substantial coastline on the Black and Azov seas. Before February 2022, about half its exports were carried out by sea via ports in this area. Food exports in particular are big business for Ukraine, responsible for around 10% of the national wealth.
Since Russia imposed a naval blockade, Ukraine, its neighbors and the European Union (EU) have worked hard to develop alternative land routes, with middling success. Firstly, these routes are significantly more expensive, and secondly, the road and rail connections only account for 10% of exports. Blockades of the Ukrainian border by Polish and Romanian farmers, protests in Bulgaria, and Hungary’s hostility have also made this alternative more difficult.
One thing has worked beyond expectations, however. Ukrainian and Romanian port infrastructure near the mouth of the River Danube, as well as the launch of Ukraine’s export sea corridor, have become extremely important and are showing real signs of success. The threat from Russian military action has been reduced by the use of Romanian and Bulgarian territorial waters (even the Kremlin hesitates to attack these two NATO allies.)
Despite the numerous Russian attacks on the Ukrainian Danube and Odesa port infrastructure in 2023, Ukraine and Romania have carried out colossal work on dredging, developing port infrastructure, increasing the number of harbor pilots, and switching to 24-hour passage of vessels, as well as other measures.
These efforts helped to increase the volume of Ukrainian exports through the Danube ports from 14.5m tons of cargo in 11 months of 2022 to 29.4m tons in 11 months of 2023. The Minister of Infrastructure of Ukraine Oleksandr Kubrakov is optimistic in a further increase of the volume of Ukrainian grain exports through the Danube ports to 4 million per month, equivalent to 48m tons annually.
Those numbers include some shipments while the deal was still in place. But since August, maritime trade has increased far more than expected. Some 8.6m tons were exported in the final five months of the year, and in December shipments peaked at 5m tons for the month.
Overall, Ukraine will have exported around 57m tons of goods by sea in 2023, about the same as in 2022 but still only about a third of the figure for 2021. There is much more work to do.
Romanian support has been central to this success. According to Reuters, the Romanian port of Constanta exported record volumes of grain in 2023, 40% of which was Ukrainian. In March, an anchorage point for Ukrainian grain exports will open in Constanta.
Transshipment points operate along the entire coast. This is a vivid example of a productive partnership in the region. Greece and Croatia have also offered their help in transporting Ukrainian grain through their own ports on the Adriatic.
According to the European Commission’s Indicative TEN-T Investment Action Plan, the expansion of the Trans-European transport network of the EU to the territory of Ukraine and Moldova is envisaged, which seeks the integration of both into the network of railway, road, water, and air routes of the EU.
The second reason for success lies with the Ukrainian military.
No one believed that it could take the war to the Black Sea Fleet in the way that it has.
The armed forces of Ukraine in 2022-23 carried out a number of exceptionally successful operations to challenge Russian superiority in the Black Sea, which it regards as its own.
The liberation of Snake Island, the destruction of Russian surveillance systems, including offshore gas and oil platforms, known as the Boyko towers, in September, and the destruction and damage of at least 16 warships (Ukraine claims 24) of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, including spectacular strikes in the same month inside the ports of occupied Crimea and against its Sevastopol HQ.
Ukraine’s navy has used domestically developed naval and aerial drones, as well as NATO-supplied cruise missiles, to make life so uncomfortable for Russia that it was forced to move units further to the east. But even that did not save the 4,000-ton landing ship Novocherkassk, which was sunk in Feodosia, a southeastern Crimean port, in December. The Kremlin is now developing ports still further east, including one in occupied Georgia.
The Black Sea Fleet was first pushed back from the waters off Ukraine’s coasts to a more distant blockade, something that could be termed a blockade in name only. It may be that Russia will strike at merchant shipping again, but this is now a much more challenging military operation, fraught with risk.
Ukraine’s Black Sea strategy, on the other hand, has been a triumph, at least up to this point. It has pressed the Russian navy back onto its heels and opened the way for shipping to resume.
This is very largely a Ukrainian endeavor, but Romania and Bulgaria both deserve an honorable mention. So too does the UK, which has provided RAF aerial overwatch to merchant vessels, insurance support through the London markets, and crucially through the provision of the Storm Shadow cruise missiles which have done huge damage to Russian warships.
The West could do much more. It lacks a Black Sea strategy which encourages Russia to act even more aggressively. The Kremlin’s methods are always the same — blocking the sea under the pretext of naval exercises, mining the sea, shelling port infrastructure, and the threat of “accidental” fire, including the territory of NATO member countries, as its missiles miss their targets.
NATO is far, far more powerful than Russia. Ukraine has shown it a good example — stand up to the bully and achieve the impossible.
Olya Korbut is an analyst on sanctions at the Black Sea Institute of Strategic Studies (Ukraine) and a Non-resident Fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA,) She has worked on OSINT monitoring and analysis of Black Sea militarization by Russia since 2014.
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
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