A Turkish-owned ship carrying corn from the Danube port of Izmail to Italy was struck and sank in Romanian waters on Oct. 5, killing two sailors. The loss came as Russian missile and drone attacks again targeted vessels and ports that move Ukrainian grain.
The following day a drone struck a Marshall Islands-flagged ship carrying rapeseed oil, killing one crew member and injuring others. On Oct. 13 another drone attack sank a cargo ship off Bulgaria. On Oct. 3 a Russian strike on a cargo ship killed one sailor and wounded three, according to the Ukrainian Sea Ports Authority. Two days later Moscow said it had hit fuel storage at Chornomorsk and two cargo vessels.
In peacetime, Odesa’s Black Sea ports were the main route to overseas buyers. Handling at Odesa, Chornomorsk and Pivdenny fell more than fifteenfold after July 22, Ukraine’s infrastructure minister said. Since the full-scale invasion, nearly 300 civilian vessels and more than a thousand port facilities have been damaged, according to Ukrainian government figures published in September.
Dmytro Barinov, president of the Ukrainian Ports Association Ukrport, said in Odesa that Russia had struck the port throughout 4.5 years of war and in July began hunting vessels arriving or leaving, which he called a disaster for farmers. He said he hoped the incidents would push presidents to press Russia to stop, and that navigation should be free.
A UN- and Turkey-brokered grain deal in July 2022 briefly guaranteed safe passage. Russia left a year later. Ukraine then ran its own corridor, with military coordination and no international guarantees. Traffic has nearly stopped since the attacks intensified, so farmers haul grain to other ports at higher fuel, labor and transport cost.
Agriculture was 56% of Ukraine’s exports in 2025, worth $22.6 billion. Turkey, Egypt and Italy are the largest buyers of Ukrainian grain. A harvest of about 84 million tons of grain and oilseed is forecast for 2026-27, while storage has been cut to 59 million tons and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization warns of an 11-million-ton shortfall by November.
Farmer Viktor Kozhukharenko said moving a ton once cost him $33 and routing it via the Danube now costs $70, with trucks waiting five or six days to unload instead of two. He said that without the sea, Ukrainian farmers have nothing.