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Ukraine’s alternative export corridor in the Black Sea is still operational despite the recent Russian attack on a Ukrainian civilian ship, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Oleksandr Kubrakov said on Thursday, November 9.
Ukrainian officials said on Wednesday that a Russian missile damaged a civilian ship flying the Liberian flag that was entering a port in the Odessa region on the Black Sea, killing one person and wounding four others. The ship was supposed to transport iron ore to China.
Kubrakov previously said on the social media platform X, Twitter, that ship movement continues to and from the ports of the Greater Odessa region, and stated that six ships carrying 231,000 tons of agricultural products left the ports in the Odessa region and are heading towards the Bosphorus Strait in Turkey.
He added that there are five ships waiting to enter the ports to load. Traffic continues through the Ukrainian corridor despite regular Russian attacks on port infrastructure.
After Russia withdrew from a UN-brokered agreement guaranteeing safe shipments of Ukrainian grain through the Black Sea, Russia has repeatedly attacked Ukrainian port infrastructure.
In August, Ukraine launched a “humanitarian corridor” for ships heading to African and Asian markets in an effort to circumvent Russia’s de facto Black Sea blockade of Kiev’s sea-borne exports, imposed after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
A senior agricultural official later said the route, which runs along Ukraine’s southwestern Black Sea coast into Romanian territorial waters and heads toward Turkey, would also be used for grain shipments.
Kubrakov said 91 ships had exported 3.3 million tons of agricultural products and minerals since the corridor became operational in August, and the Ukrainian Agricultural Business Club Association said this month that Ukrainian agricultural grain exports increased 15 percent to 4.8 million tons in October thanks to the new corridor.
