Before the war, Ukrainian river ports on the Danube were rarely used, with some of them completely dilapidated. However, after Russia invaded Ukraine and controlled the exit routes to the Black Sea, Kyiv is reviving the old river ports in order to avoid the sea blockade and speed up the export of the country’s wheat. “Take the example of the Reni River port,” Alla Stoyanova, head of the Odessa region’s agricultural policy department, told the Guardian. The port was one of the most important in the Danube region during the Soviet Union and a passage to Romania. “It hasn’t been used at all recently. So now we are working to expand it, alongside other river ports, to increase capacity. As we speak, over 160 ships are waiting in the Black Sea to enter the Sulina Canal, but they cannot because the capacity of this canal is only 5-6 ships per day.” At the beginning of the Russian invasion, the silos and harbors throughout Odessa were filled with more than 25 million tons of grain. Today, 5 million of these have been exported via alternative road, rail and river routes. “In March we managed to export 200,000 tons,” Stoyanova said. “In April 1.6 million, in May 1 million 743,000 tons; and in June over 2.5 million But this capacity is still not enough, because normally with our six ports in the Odessa region we exported 5-6 million tons of grain every month.” Before the war, about five or six ships left the port of Odessa carrying a total of 100,000 tons of grain, with a single ship capable of carrying up to 50,000 tons. “A truck can only carry 25 tons and a train car 60 tons,” says Stoyanova. “To load the equivalent of a grain carrier, we would need 2,000 trucks. All these long queues of trucks and trains that you can see at the border are because the neighboring countries are not logistically able to handle so much grain from us.” To the extent that Kyiv plans to expand its river ports with at least two new silos and special parking lots for trucks to load grain faster, the fact remains that these are only stopgap measures to preserve grain shipments. Ukrainian officials know that opening the Black Sea route is the only way to alleviate world hunger. “The truth is that there is no alternative to the ports,” Stoyanova said. “We must immediately unblock them. The world can find a way to get Russia to agree to this. We don’t just want Russia to promise something, we want it to agree [to unblock our seaports] within the framework of the decision of the UN General Assembly. If Russia agrees to this, they won’t be able to back down [from the agreement].” A waterway flowing at the mouth of the Danube, in Odessa. Photo: Alessio Mamo/The Guardian “If, unfortunately, we lose soldiers every day who bravely defend our country, there are other statistics, like every 48 seconds a person in the world dies of hunger,” he adds. The number of hungry people in the world has risen by 150 million since the start of the Covid pandemic, according to the UN, warning that the food crisis sparked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine risks pushing the worst-hit countries into widespread famine. On Thursday, as Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, told reporters that Moscow was ready to negotiate with Ukraine over grain, a series of Russian missiles destroyed two combine harvesters containing 35 tons of grain in the Odesa region, according to with local authorities. Meanwhile, Ukrainian farmers in the occupied territories had no choice but to sell their crops to the Russians. Two Ukrainian farmers in the occupied Kherson region told the Guardian they sold their grain to Russian buyers last month at discounted prices. “My wheat was sold almost 20% cheaper than usual. But it’s better than nothing,” said one farmer, who requested anonymity for fear of reprisals from local authorities. “I didn’t have enough space to store grain, so selling was the only option,” added the farmer. The second farmer said he was approached by an agricultural company based in Crimea, who asked him to sign documents to prove that the grain was bought “legally”. He said he sold his grain for about $100 a tonne, which was “slightly above” the cost of production. On Tuesday, the Moscow-based head of the southeastern Zaporizhzhia region told Russia’s Tass news agency that Ukrainian farmers in the occupied territories received about $200 a ton for grain. Subscribe to First Edition, our free daily newsletter – every morning at 7am. BST An extensive transportation network also appears to have emerged to ship grain from the Kherson region to ports in southern Crimea, usually the first stop for Ukrainian grain. “We receive many requests to transport grain from Kherson to Crimean ports,” said Anna, a director at a logistics company based in the border region of Rostov. “People are willing to pay us very good money to take the grain and transport it to the Crimea, a journey that is not always safe.” Fierce fighting continues in the region as Ukraine, bolstered by newly acquired Western weapons, aims to launch a counter-offensive to retake territory. Anna said her company sends three to five trucks every day to pick up grain from Kherson and ship it to the Crimean ports of Sevastopol and Kerch. NASA said on Thursday that Russian forces have now captured about 22 percent of Ukraine’s agricultural land, with Kyiv accusing Russia of stealing more than 600,000 tons of grain from occupied Ukrainian lands to sell on international markets. On the same day, Ukraine summoned the Turkish ambassador, saying that Turkey had allowed a Russian-flagged ship carrying thousands of tons of stolen Ukrainian grain to leave the port of Karasu. Turkish customs officials seized the ship at Ukraine’s request on Tuesday after Kyiv said the cargo was illegally carrying 7,000 tons of grain from Russian-held Berdyansk, a port in southeastern Ukraine. There is growing evidence that some of the Ukrainian grain arriving at these ports is then sent abroad, mainly to ports in Syria and Turkey.
