In Odesa, no-one is safe from Russia's new Black Sea strikes

In Odesa, Russia's recent Black Sea assaults have left no one untouched. Russian missiles and drones are relentlessly striking Ukraine's Black Sea ports, including Odesa.

Svitlana Halchenko, a warehouse shift manager at Odesa's main port, winces as she recalls the Russian ballistic missile that exploded at her workplace, claiming the lives of her colleagues. "My crane operator, my partner, died five metres from me… The driver remained in the cabin. He also died," she recounts. Despite her injuries—a limp, and shrapnel still embedded in her leg and back—Svitlana is resolute in her commitment to work. However, her once vibrant workplace is now largely quiet.

Russia is intensifying its efforts to sever Ukraine's commercial ties with the global community, launching attacks along the entire Black Sea coastline. The devastation is evident everywhere: damaged port infrastructure, listing ships with charred bridges, and smoldering containers. This is particularly true towards the horizon, where the approaches to Ukraine's once bustling ports—Odesa, Chornomorsk, Pivdennyi—are now almost devoid of vessels.

Svitlana maintains a brave smile throughout our conversation, yet her distress is palpable. Her fingers constantly twist a tissue as she struggles to maintain composure, and tears well up behind her glasses as she gazes into the distance. The past few weeks have been exceptionally challenging. "It's been very difficult for morale," she sighs deeply. "A lot of sirens, a lot of shaheds [drones], a lot of hits. People are very tense."

According to Ukraine's port administration, July witnessed 57 Russian attacks on civilian vessels, with 22 occurring at sea, and an additional 67 strikes on port infrastructure. While Russian attacks on international vessels have happened before, they have never been this frequent or lethal. On July 19, the Turkish-owned cargo vessel Golden Leo was hit by three Russian missiles, resulting in the deaths of nine Indian and Syrian crew members and a Ukrainian pilot. The ship, carrying Ukrainian corn, sank off Odesa a week later.

According to the global shipping journal Lloyd's List, the Black Sea may now be the most perilous region for shipping worldwide, with July being the deadliest month for merchant seamen since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine began.

At his union's offices in the port city, Oleg Grygoriuk, Chairman of the Marine Transport Workers Union of Ukraine, states that his members are suffering. "There are a lot of veterans who already served their country," he says, "and they literally say that being in the port is more scary than being on the front line." Odesa's proximity to Russian-occupied territory means workers often have minimal time to react. "A missile flies from Crimea within a minute," he explains. "If you are sitting in a crane, you need three and a half minutes to get down and go to the shelter. There's literally no time to do that."

During a rare visit to one of the area's main ports, we observed almost no activity. Hundreds of meters of berths lay empty, and towering gantry cranes stood idle as a skeleton crew performed maintenance. Odesa's port is now deserted as Russia escalates its attacks. The military authorities permitted the visit under strict conditions: we were not to name the facility or film anything. Ukraine aims to prevent Russia from knowing what has and hasn't been damaged, or from revealing details that might assist Moscow in further targeting. Two damaged cargo vessels were moored nearby, both having sustained severe damage to their superstructures, where the bridge and crew quarters are located. Only one lone freighter was seen approaching the port.

"My heart is broken," a senior manager, who requested anonymity, told us. "Normally there's a queue, even out at sea, waiting for a berth." He referred to the UN-brokered 2022 Black Sea Grain Initiative, under which Russia agreed to lift its blockade on Ukraine's agricultural exports, establishing safe maritime corridors to Odesa's main ports. "They stopped the deal in the middle of 2023, but they didn't start attacking it until recently," the manager said. "Today they do it systematically."

Midway through our tour, sirens blared, forcing us to seek shelter for several minutes as a Russian jet-powered drone flew overhead. Weary dock workers checked their phones for updates until the all-clear sounded. The manager stated that recent alerts have compelled the port to shut down for 15 out of 24 hours. Technically, the port, like all others in the area, is open, with no prohibition on commercial ships attempting to use them. However, the risks are clearly too great for most shipowners.

"There is barely anybody who wants to call because there is a huge problem with people getting killed," says Andrey Stavnitser, co-owner and CEO of one of the largest ports in the area. "We can see that the whole supply chain is on hold." Russia has rendered Ukraine's Black Sea coastline incredibly perilous for shipping. Stavnitser believes Russia is almost certainly retaliating for Ukraine's recent, highly successful attacks on Russian shipping, including sanctioned vessels carrying oil, as well as other ships involved in ferrying supplies to Russian-occupied Crimea. Using its own drones, Ukraine's Operation MoLoChKa (roughly translating to "Moscow will fall through Crimea") has struck approximately 200 Russian vessels, bringing traffic in the strategic Sea of Azov to a virtual standstill.

Ukrainians bristle at the suggestion that Russia and Ukraine are engaged in the same game. Kyiv, they point out, is attempting to loosen Moscow's grip on occupied territory, while Russia is preventing Ukraine from exporting much-needed grain to the international market. With Ukraine's summer grain harvest well underway, this is occurring at the worst possible time. "It's the most sensitive period," says Volodymyr Slavinskyi, trading director for Nibulon, one of the country's leading grain exporters. "Farmers need to quickly harvest grains from the fields, not to lose the crop. They need to be able to sell the crop they harvested and reinvest money in the next production cycle."

The impact of a prolonged shutdown of Ukraine's ports is likely to be severe. Ukraine is one of the world's largest producers of grain and oilseeds, supplying approximately 6% of global wheat exports before Russia's full-scale invasion and 10% of corn exports. However, reports suggest its export capacity has dropped by at least a third since Russia launched its full-scale invasion. The Black Sea remains a vital export route for the country. Last year, the Greater Odesa ports accounted for over 73 million tonnes of Ukraine's maritime exports, with grain making up 38 million tonnes. With almost no vessels currently moving on Ukraine's Black Sea shipping corridor, traders are already calculating the cost of this summer's closure. "I would say we've already lost the ability to deliver to global customers around half a million or 700,000 metric tons of Ukrainian grains and oilseeds," Slavinskyi states.

Away from the port, Odesa is determined to showcase a very different aspect. The summer season is in full swing. The beaches are crowded as visitors from all over Ukraine flock to the Black Sea. Buskers perform on the city's famous Potemkin Stairs, while sunbathers barely flinch as sirens sound and explosions rumble in the distance. In a video published on Monday, swimmers were seen removing a Russian drone from the water as holidaymakers watched. They are aware of the risks. In late June, 26-year-old Daria Kravchenko was killed when shrapnel from an intercepted Russian drone landed on the beach. This week, holidaymakers on Russia's equally Black Sea coast suffered a similar fate when an intercepted Ukrainian drone crashed onto a busy beach. Local authorities reported seven fatalities, including three children.

It is unclear what Ukraine was targeting, but this war on ships and ports has many incidental victims: sailors, dockworkers, or people simply unlucky enough to live or work nearby. Outside Odesa, after a recent drone explosion, we found 83-year-old Andrii Dudik surveying the mangled wreckage of his house and garden. He was physically unharmed and remarkably composed about the drone that had shattered his routine afternoon nap just hours earlier. "I was lying there, wondering what I was going to do this afternoon. Now I know," he joked. When asked if he felt like an accidental victim of Russia's attacks on the nearby ports, he replied, "Absolutely. And I won't forget it."