Russia spent a fifth straight day hammering the ports around Odesa. Ukraine said it spent the same stretch hunting Russia's tankers. The Black Sea war has moved onto the water itself, and the traffic caught in between is the merchant shipping that keeps the region's trade alive.
The strikes on the Greater Odesa area killed at least three people and wounded three more, according to the city's military administrator, Serhiy Lysak, and the regional governor, Oleh Kiper, who called it a massive drone and missile assault in its fifth day. Russia's Defense Ministry confirmed it had hit the ports at Odesa and Chornomorsk, saying it targeted sites used to store fuel and assemble drones. Those ports move much of Ukraine's grain and cargo, and they are central to how the country pays for the war.
Ukraine has been hitting back at sea. Its drone-force commander, Robert Brovdi, said Ukrainian strikes had hit 20 vessels he identified as part of Russia's "shadow fleet," 17 oil tankers, two gas tankers, and a tugboat. He claimed earlier in the week that 116 Russian vessels had been "hunted down" over nine days. Those are Ukrainian military figures, and no independent count confirms them. Moscow said it was preparing to reroute exports after a run of attacks on its shipping in the Sea of Azov, and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov called the attacks on its shipping "terrorism."
What each side is now doing to the other's ships is the same thing from opposite ends: choking the sea lanes the enemy sells through. And the sea in question is one Türkiye sits astride.
Türkiye holds the door to the Black Sea. Under the Montreux Convention it controls warship passage through the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles, and it brokered the 2022 grain corridor that let Ukrainian wheat sail past a war to reach the markets that needed it. A campaign against Black Sea shipping is a campaign against the exact traffic Ankara has spent years trying to keep moving.
It is also a danger to Turkish hulls. A Turkish-owned merchant ship, the Atlas Bey, was hit by a drone off Odesa on Tuesday, its captain still missing, one vessel among many now finding that neutral colors buy little in these waters. Türkiye has kept a foot in both camps through the war, arming Ukraine while trading with Russia and talking to both, and that balance rests in part on the Black Sea staying navigable.
The assault on Odesa was still going as this published, the vessel counts were still being claimed rather than confirmed, and neither side showed any sign of easing its grip on the other's ships.