A civilian cargo vessel has left Ukraine’s southern port of Odesa, Kyiv has said, despite warnings from Russia that its navy could target ships using the Black Sea export hubs.
The announcement raises the spectre of a standoff with Russian warships, after Moscow pulled out of a key deal last month brokered by the UN and Turkey, which guaranteed safe passage for grain shipments from three Ukrainian ports.
Ukraine’s infrastructure minister, Oleksandr Kubrakov, said the Hong Kong-flagged Joseph Schulte left on Wednesday morning from the port of Odesa – one of three ports that participated in the now-scrapped grain export deal.
The Joseph Schulte is the first vessel to sail from the port since 16 July, according to Oleksandr Kubrakov, Ukraine’s deputy prime minister. It had been stuck in Odesa since February 2022.
The ship was travelling down a temporary corridor that Ukraine asked the International Maritime Organization (IMO) to ratify. With ship insurance likely to be high for operators, Ukraine has told the IMO it would “provide guarantees of compensation for damage”.
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, welcomed the development. “Ukraine has just made an important step toward restoring the freedom of navigation in the Black Sea,” he said on social media.
The Joseph Schulte was off the coast of Romania, en route to Turkey, a maritime tracking website showed early on Thursday.
Since Russia’s exit from the grain deal in July, it has stepped up attacks on Ukraine’s Black Sea port infrastructure and facilities Kyiv uses to export grain through the Danube river.
The governor of the Odesa region said on Wednesday that Russian attack drones had damaged grain facilities at a river port near the Romanian border. The air force meanwhile said it had downed 13 Russian drones over Odesa and the neighbouring Mykolaiv region.
The incident sparked outrage in EU-member Romania – now a key hub for Ukrainian grain exports abroad since the collapse of the exports deal.
“I strongly condemn the continued [Russian] attacks on innocent people, civilian infrastructure, including grain silos in the ports of Reni and Izmail,” Romanian foreign minister Luminita Odobescu said.
Zelenskiy, too, condemned the strikes, adding that “every Russian attack on them is a blow to world food prices, it is a blow to social and political stability in Africa and Asia”.
“It is unacceptable,” said US state department spokesperson Vedant Patel. “Putin simply does not care about global food security.”
The possibility of a Russian attack on cargo ships in the Black Sea increased after Moscow said it fired warning shots from a warship at a cargo vessel heading towards Izmail last week.
Analysts, however, say Black Sea shipping has in general remained steady since the end of the grain deal – despite higher insurance rates – but shipments out of Ukraine have fallen.
The Joseph Schulte is carrying more than 30,000 tons of cargo, with 2,114 containers, including food products, according to Kubrakov. The vessel is the highest value ship of the 60 still stuck in Ukraine since the war began, according to John Stawpert, senior manager of environment and trade for the International Chamber of Shipping, which represents 80% of the world’s commercial fleet.
He noted that China’s political closeness to Russia likely helped enable the ship’s departure. It is unlikely other vessels will follow, he said, either because of their flags or locations in Ukraine.
Agence France-Presse and Associated Press contributed to this report
