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Black Sea Shipping

Merchant crews off Romania and Bulgaria have become the sea war’s casualties, and its cost now falls on both sides’ grain trade.

AP counts drone attacks on at least seven cargo ships off Romania and Bulgaria in October, leaving two dead and at least 25 missing. On October 13 the HS Dignity was hit off Bulgaria and 11 of its crew are missing; on October 14–15 two tankers, the Yara J and the Wine Trader, burned near Sulina, and seven of the Wine Trader’s sailors are still being searched for. Bulgaria’s prime minister told parliament the logic points to Russia, “the problem is that we cannot prove it”. Russia’s defence ministry, for its part, says it struck three cargo ships bound for Odesa and Mykolaiv on October 12, claiming they carried military cargo, which Reuters could not verify.

Insurers had already moved: in September London’s Joint War Committee listed almost the whole sea as a war-risk area. And Russia’s grain has stopped using its own Black Sea ports. In early October its port exports fell more than 80 per cent to 436,000 tonnes, Interfax figures show, and none of it left through a Black Sea port.

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The whole story4 chapters
The state of it — as of October 17, 2026
7+ ships
cargo ships hit off Romania and Bulgaria in October; 2 dead, 25+ missing
0 ports
on the Black Sea among Russia’s grain-loading ports in early October, out of seven
1 a day
ships calling at Odesa’s ports, down from seven or eight

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Drones Hit Ships Inside Romania’s Waters

Four more merchant ships were struck. On October 13 three aerial drones hit the Malta-flagged, Ukrainian-operated Chelsea 3, whose 15 crew were taken off, and the Guinea-Bissau-flagged HS Dignity, whose 11 crew are missing; Bulgaria summoned Russia’s ambassador. On October 14–15 the Comoros-flagged tanker Yara J and the San Marino-flagged Wine Trader burned near Sulina; five of the Wine Trader’s 12 crew were rescued and seven missing. Accounts differ on whether both lay inside Romania’s territorial waters. Romania’s foreign minister said “Russia bears full responsibility”; Bulgaria’s prime minister says the logic points to Russia but “we cannot prove it”.

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Earlier this month

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Russia’s Grain Stops Leaving by Its Black Sea Ports

Russia’s port grain exports in early October fell more than 80 per cent on a year earlier, to 436,000 tonnes, according to Interfax figures relayed by the Ukrainian outlet NV. Wheat was 427,400 tonnes against 2 million. Only seven ports loaded grain, against 35, and none of them was on the Black Sea: the volume went out of Ust-Luga, Vysotsk and St Petersburg on the Baltic, and a little through the Caspian and Vladivostok. Bloomberg reports grain is also moving by rail to Latvian and Lithuanian ports after attacks by both sides sharply cut Black Sea exports.

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Russia Says It Is Striking Ships Bound for Ukraine’s Ports

Russia’s defence ministry said it struck three cargo vessels with drones on October 12 — two bound for Odesa, one for Mykolaiv — and that they carried military cargo; Reuters could not verify it. On October 16 the ministry claimed another ship heading for Odesa, unnamed, with Turkish sailors reportedly aboard, the trade outlet USM reported, citing Bulgaria’s Maritime.bg. A Bulgarian shipping agent rejects the weapons claim. The risk consultancy Ambrey estimates Russian forces are behind about 80 per cent of attacks on merchant ships in the Black Sea, which have widened in number and range since July.

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Three Merchant Ships Hit off Romania and Bulgaria; a Tanker Burns off Sochi

Aerial and sea drones struck two merchant ships about 80 miles off Bulgaria on October 6, sinking the Togo-flagged Alfa Watan and setting fire to the Palau-flagged Able, which was carrying wheat, Prime Minister Rumen Radev said. A day earlier a Turkish-owned ship carrying corn burned and sank in Romania’s economic zone; Romanian authorities reported two dead. Bulgaria called the drones unidentified; Zelensky alone said the attack was Russian. Radev said insurance costs were rising. The same day Russia’s transport ministry said a naval drone set a Liberian-flagged tanker ablaze off Sochi; Kyiv did not comment.

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We verified all the details with the Bulgarian side. Our Navy contacted its counterparts in Bulgaria, and it has been established that this was a combined Russian attack using maritime and aerial drones.

— Volodymyr Zelenskyy

Not yet checked

Unverified. Bulgaria has not confirmed it: on October 16 Prime Minister Rumen Radev told parliament the logic points to Russia but “we cannot prove it” (AP). No coastal state has published evidence naming the attacker.

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Russia’s Grain Finds Only a Tenth of the Way Around the Black Sea

Bloomberg reported on October 1 that Russia shipped about 1.3 million tons of grain and oilseed through five alternative ports between July and September — roughly a tenth of the 12 million tons its Black Sea ports could have handled in those months. Daily rail loadings of farm products at the Baltic ports of Ust-Luga and Vysotsk rose 465 per cent in three weeks of September. The report is cited as relayed by the Institute for the Study of War, which ties the shortfall to Ukrainian strikes on Russia’s Black Sea export terminals; that link is its reading.

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London’s Insurers List Almost the Whole Black Sea as a War-Risk Area

The Joint War Committee, which advises the London marine insurance market, widened its war-risk listing to “the Black Sea, excluding the territorial waters of adjoining countries other than Russia and Ukraine” — the whole sea except the coastal waters of Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania and Georgia — together with the Sea of Azov and all of Ukraine’s inland waters, Safety4Sea reported on September 21. The committee notes that how a listing applies to individual policies remains subject to negotiation; the Guardian reports insurance rates have soared since.

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This quarter

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Sea Drones Reach Sochi for the First Time, Hitting an Oil-and-Gas Support Ship

Ukrainian naval drones struck the Russian support vessel Nefrit in the port of Sochi on 3 September — the first time Ukraine's sea drones have reached Sochi. Two measures of that reach are on the record and are not the same thing: about 560 kilometres from the nearest Ukrainian-held coast, and about 820 kilometres by sea, the figure ISW uses. The navy released footage and Sochi's mayor declared an emergency. The Nefrit is tied to Russia's offshore oil-and-gas work and, by Ukrainian and open-source accounts, to repair of the Caspian Pipeline Consortium terminal carrying Kazakhstan's oil — reported, not confirmed.

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Russia has not sailed a missile-armed warship out of its own ports for three months, firing its sea-launched cruise missiles from beside its naval bases instead, and has been unable to repair or maintain its ships and submarines for two years.

— Dmytro Pletenchuk

Odesa's Ports Go From Eight Ships a Day to One

Ukrainian Ports Association president Dmytro Barinov told the Telegraph that traffic through Odesa Oblast ports has fallen from an average of seven or eight vessels a day to one, since Russian forces began repeated strikes on Black Sea port infrastructure using S8000 Banderol jet-powered loitering munitions. The Banderol entered serial production in late July and is launched from Orion drones and Mi-28N helicopters over Crimean airspace, stored in Dzhankoi Raion and at the Kirovske and Simferopol airfields; a Kremlin-affiliated milblogger says it is cheaper and faster to build than a Kh-101 cruise missile. The Telegraph report was reached only as relayed by ISW.

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Ukraine Strikes Grain Ships at Russian Ports for the First Time

Ukrainian forces struck at least five grain vessels near the Black Sea ports of Novorossiysk and Tuapse on August 17 and 18, Bloomberg reported citing people familiar with the matter — the first confirmed strikes on grain ships at Russian ports, and a new class of maritime target. They came days after Moscow rejected Ukraine's proposed moratorium on Black Sea maritime strikes. Russian authorities are said to be downplaying the attacks, and the attribution is soft — "unspecified actors", likely Ukrainian — so it is recorded here as reported rather than confirmed. It extends a campaign that had already reached the Baltic at Ust-Luga into the grain trade that helps fund the war.

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The Biggest Strike Yet on Novorossiysk Halts Two of Russia's Largest Grain Terminals

On the night of 11-12 August Ukraine mounted its largest strike of the war on Novorossiysk, the Black Sea Fleet's main refuge and a principal oil and grain gateway. Zelensky said it used Palyanytsya jet drones, Neptune cruise missiles and sea drones against air-defence positions, berths and port infrastructure; Ukrainian sources published footage of fires at the Sheskharis oil terminal and the naval base, and Governor Veniamin Kondratyev acknowledged the strike. The measurable consequence was at the grain terminals: Reuters, citing four industry sources, reported two of Russia's largest suspended operations. Satellite imagery from Vantor, read by Naval News, indicates the frigates Admiral Essen and Admiral Makarov were hit on or beside their forward vertical-launch cells and burned — likely disabling the missile batteries of the two most capable surface ships the fleet had left after the Moskva sank in 2022. An S-300 fire-control radar was damaged. That reading is the publication's own analysts', and Russia has not acknowledged it.

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War-Risk Cover Dries Up in the Black and Azov Seas

The maritime strikes are raising the cost of moving cargo through Russia's southern waters. RBK reported on August 4, citing Russian shipping and insurance sources, that Russian insurers have effectively stopped covering military- and terrorism-risk for cargo ships in the Black and Azov seas — after the Russian Defence Ministry issued a navigational warning for those waters from July 12 to 18 amid intensified Ukrainian vessel strikes — and that foreign insurers have raised war-risk rates. The account is RBK's, a Russian business outlet, relayed by the Institute for the Study of War. It is a third-party cost of the campaign, borne by shippers rather than by either combatant, and a market signal of the same maritime pressure the Nadezhda and Gelendzhik strikes made visible.

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Drones Reach a Cargo Ship on the Turkish Route into Novorossiysk

On August 3 drones struck the Cameroon-flagged roll-on/roll-off cargo vessel Nadezhda as it approached Russia's Novorossiysk port from Samsun, Turkey, injuring three to four crew, according to Turkish officials and Russian opposition media relayed by the Institute for the Study of War. Russian opposition sources distinguished the vessel from a separate Russian-flagged dry-cargo ship of the same name that Ukraine has sanctioned. The strike extends the maritime campaign to third-country-flagged commercial shipping on the route into Novorossiysk, and lands the same day as the Gelendzhik beach strike a short distance away — both close to the naval base the port hosts.

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Naval Drones Choke Russia's Crimea Resupply

Ukraine's drone interdiction campaign has begun to sever Russia's logistics to occupied Crimea from two directions. Unmanned Systems Forces commander Robert 'Magyar' Brovdi reported Ukrainian forces struck 183 vessels in the Black and Azov seas in July, destroying five ferries that handled roughly 80% of military transport from the port of Kavkaz to the peninsula and cutting the Kerch ferry crossing's capacity by about 75%. By July 20 the campaign had extended to the northern land route: ISW assessed that Ukraine's intermediate-range strikes have 'at least partially deprived Russian forces of a significant' ground line of communication — the M-14 (R-280) Rostov–Crimea highway — observing at least four strikes on it between July 1 and 20. ISW reported the campaign has forced Russia to divert elite Rubikon drone crews and air-defense units to guard shipping, and that the Black Sea Fleet ordered the evacuation of servicemembers' families from occupied Sevastopol. Vessel-strike tallies are Ukrainian claims; the Russian countermeasures and the GLOC assessment are ISW-reported.

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