Russia’s Port Strikes Leave Ukrainian Grain Trapped and Farms Near Insolvency

Ukraine’s harvest is there, but the route to market is not. Russia’s attacks have closed the country’s Black Sea ports, leaving winter wheat, corn, lentils and barley piling up in barns. The grain risks rotting before it can be shipped.

For Volodymyr Varbanets, who has worked his land since the 1970s, the shutdown threatens the farm’s ability to keep operating. He showed Financial Times foreign editor Alec Russell a rocket he had found in his fields. Varbanets estimates that the farm might last six months, perhaps a little longer, but could not manage a year without a way to pay taxes, buy diesel or obtain spare parts.

Shipping overland is the only alternative route to market, but Russell describes it as ruinously expensive. The problem is therefore not simply that the harvest cannot be sold: farmers must keep carrying operating costs while the usual export route is closed.

Even during the war, Odesa’s three major Black Sea ports had handled 350 vessels a month. Now the docks are quiet. Before the shutdown, Ukrainian agricultural products were exported to 300 million people in 70 countries. The loss of that route puts pressure on farms and removes a major connection between Ukraine’s agricultural output and overseas buyers.

Oleh Kiper, head of the Odesa Regional Military Administration, calls the disruption a global crisis. He says the world will soon feel the impact of Ukrainian facilities being out of operation. Kiper sees the attacks as directed at civilians as well as infrastructure, and says Russia is likely trying to incite unrest inside the country.

The export shutdown is unfolding alongside attacks on infrastructure that supports daily life. Last winter, Russia struck half of the region’s large electricity substations, disrupting heating, water and communications. Night footage credited to DTEK shows a substation engulfed in fire.

Dmytro Hryhoriev, chief executive of DTEK Odesa Grids, says attacks happen day and night and crews are continually repairing damage. Because the previous winter was difficult, they are pressing ahead with repairs now to prepare for the coming heating season. Those repairs must continue in the face of repeated strikes.

The risks are related but distinct: the port closures make it harder for farmers to sell and ship their crops, while damage to substations has disrupted essential services. Together, they leave the region facing economic pressure and a demanding effort to maintain infrastructure ahead of winter.

Odesa’s air defences offer a measure of protection, not a way to prevent every strike. From a secret location, pilots control interceptor drones launched from pads around the region. The unit shot down more than 150 Russian Shahed and Gerbera drones in the first three weeks of September alone. Thermal footage credited to the Sloboda air-defence unit shows a drone targeting a flying fixed-wing drone over a field.

Commander Timur Samosudov says the unit usually uses two interceptors against a Shahed. But even a single drone getting through counts as a loss, because a home may be destroyed and someone’s life shattered. “For the moment, we are losing,” he says.

The standard Samosudov describes is absolute, while the defences are stretched by changes in the war and its technology. Russell says only fighter jets are truly effective against Russia’s newer, faster, jet-powered Shaheds. The unit’s successes therefore do not remove the danger posed by drones that get through.

Samosudov says there is no situation that would make the unit give up or stop defending the country, and that it is ready for even the harshest winter. People in Odesa remain defiant, but Russell says they fear this will be their toughest winter yet.