Chapter 1
The Black Sea is where the long-range war is fought against what moves…
The Black Sea is where the long-range war is fought against what moves by sea: ferries and warships, cargo ships and tankers, grain terminals and ports. Both sides attack it. Ukraine’s sea and aerial drones have gone after the shipping that supplies Crimea, the port of Novorossiysk and its grain and oil trade, and Russian ships ever further along the coast; Russia has struck Ukraine’s own ports around Odesa. Each step has widened the target set, and in October 2026 it widened again, to merchant ships off Romania and Bulgaria, two NATO members, with sailors killed and missing and no attacker established.
Chapter 2
Ukraine’s campaign at sea began against Crimea’s supply lines
Ukraine’s campaign at sea began against Crimea’s supply lines. By its own commander’s count its forces struck 183 vessels in the Black and Azov Seas in July 2026 and destroyed the five ferries that carried most military transport across the Kerch Strait — figures that are Ukraine’s claims; the Institute for the Study of War reports the countermeasures Russia took, diverting drone crews and air defence to guard shipping and evacuating Black Sea Fleet families from Sevastopol. From there the targets moved outward and into trade. On August 3 drones hit a Cameroon-flagged cargo ship on the route from Turkey into Novorossiysk, the first third-country merchant ship on that route. Russian insurers stopped covering war risk in the Black and Azov Seas, and foreign insurers raised their rates. On the night of August 11–12 Ukraine’s largest strike of the war on Novorossiysk halted two of Russia’s largest grain terminals, and satellite imagery read by Naval News suggests two of the fleet’s most capable frigates were hit, which Russia has not acknowledged. On August 17–18 at least five grain ships were struck near Novorossiysk and Tuapse, the first such strikes at Russian ports, though the attacker was not named; they came days after Moscow rejected Ukraine’s proposal for a moratorium on Black Sea strikes. On September 3 sea drones reached Sochi for the first time, about 820 kilometres by sea, hitting an oil-and-gas support ship. Ukraine’s navy says the Russian fleet has kept its missile-armed warships in port for three months, a claim no published data yet tests.
Chapter 3
The cost runs both ways
The cost runs both ways. Russia’s strikes on Odesa’s ports with Banderol jet-powered loitering munitions cut traffic there from seven or eight ships a day to one, by the account of Ukraine’s ports association. Russia’s grain trade has been squeezed from the other side: between July and September it moved about 1.3 million tons of grain and oilseed through alternative ports, roughly a tenth of what its Black Sea ports could have handled, and rail loadings at its Baltic ports rose sharply. The Institute for the Study of War ties that shortfall to Ukraine’s strikes on Russia’s Black Sea terminals; the link is its reading.
Chapter 4
In October the attacks reached shipping off Romania and Bulgaria
In October the attacks reached shipping off Romania and Bulgaria. Between October 5 and 15 drones struck a Turkish-owned corn carrier, ships flagged in Togo and Palau, and more vessels near the Danube mouth, sinking several; two sailors were killed and seven were missing after the last round, and two of the ships were hit inside Romania’s territorial waters. Romania’s foreign minister blames Russia and an unnamed NATO official told Reuters the drones were Russian; Bulgaria calls them unidentified. Ukraine’s president said his navy had established with Bulgaria’s that the attack was Russian, which Bulgaria has not confirmed. Off Sochi, meanwhile, a tanker burned after what Russia’s transport ministry said was a naval-drone strike; Kyiv did not comment. What is unresolved is who is attacking the ships off the two NATO coasts, on evidence a coastal state will stand behind, and what the attacks will do to insurance, port calls and the grain trade that runs past them.
And now
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.
Where it stands today →