kyiv breaks Russian naval blockade in the Black Sea

2023-09-22 17:52:33
The bulk carrier “Aroyat”, flying the flag of the Palau archipelago, leaves the port of Chornomorsk loaded with several thousand tonnes of wheat, on September 22, 2023. STRINGER / AFP

This is a small victory for Ukraine, although there is no guarantee that it will be lasting. Friday, September 22, a ship loaded with several thousand tons of wheat left the port of Chornomorsk, located south of Odessa, to go to Egypt, effectively breaking the naval blockade imposed by Russia since the non-renewal of the grain agreement which allowed Ukraine to export part of its agricultural products despite the war.

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The bulk carrier Aroyatflying the flag of the Palau archipelago, was tasked with “17,600 tonnes of Ukrainian wheat”, indicated Oleksandr Kubrakov, Ukrainian infrastructure minister, in a message published Friday on X (formerly Twitter). The ship took a “temporary corridor” which travels along the Ukrainian coast to Romanian territorial waters. A first building, the Resilient Africahad already taken the same route on September 19, but it was only transporting 3,000 tonnes of wheat.

These movements of grain ships are the first since Russia refused to renew, on July 17, the agreement reached in 2022 with Ukraine under the aegis of Turkey. This had allowed Kiev to export some 33 million tonnes of grain by sea since July 2022, before Moscow decided to put an end to it. Russia announced this summer that any commercial ship attempting to reach or leave a Ukrainian port would now be considered a military target, imposing a de facto naval blockade.

Limited Russian resources

This first resumption of maritime traffic was preceded by several Ukrainian military actions, which helped to keep Russian ships away from the Gulf of Odessa and reduced Moscow’s means of surveillance. On September 11, the Ukrainians notably claimed the capture of several drilling platforms occupied by the Russians in the northwest of the Black Sea. Unmanned but equipped with radar and detection means, these offshore installations were used to monitor maritime traffic in the region.

At the end of August, a major radar station located at Cape Tarkhankout, in the far west of Crimea, was also damaged, probably during a night raid carried out by Ukrainian special forces, who came from the mainland aboard speedboats . According to military experts, the Mayak station allowed the Russians to control all aircraft flying over the northern and central part of the Black Sea. “The objective is clearly to blind the Russians”, assures a military source. The headquarters of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, located in the center of Sevastopol, was also the target of a missile attack on Friday September 22.

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