Status: 10.08.2023, 18:29 p.m.
By: Patrick Mayer
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NATO and Ukraine have found a way to get grain freighters through the Black Sea past the Russian blockade. According to one observer, the risk is great.
Munich/Izmail: Are Ukraine and NATO taking a high risk in the Black Sea? This is the thesis of Sergei Vakulenko, former manager of the Russian state-owned energy company Gazprom Neft and now an expert at the Carnegie Center think tank.
The defense alliance NATO had devised a trick to circumvent the Russian blockade in the Black Sea. In mid-July, Russia canceled the grain deal with Kiev and instead began bombing the huge port of Odessa on the Black Sea coast – the largest transshipment point for shipping grain.
On August 1, however, three freighters under observation by NATO aircraft sailed along the coast of Bulgaria and Romania to the Ukrainian Danube port of Izmail, directly on the Romanian border, which the Kremlin then attacked from the air. Wakulenko now warns that it is precisely because of this "move" in the Ukraine war that there could be a threat of a "direct confrontation" between Russia and NATO.
The war has reached the far west of Ukraine: residents are standing at the bombed port terminal of Izmaili on the border with Romania. © IMAGO / Avalon.red
Russian blockade in the Black Sea: Is Ukraine acting with calculation?
"Ukraine will certainly try to break the grain blockade by inviting ships flying the flag of those countries into its ports that Russia presumably does not dare to attack. There are indications that an attack on a ship flying the flag of a NATO country is considered an act of aggression and triggers Article 5 of the NATO Charter, which would lead to a direct conflict between NATO and Russia," energy expert Vakulenko wrote in an op-ed for the Serbian daily Politika. Therefore, "Ukrainian exports with such ships could be seen as a kind of move: Russia must either refrain from attacks, or create a pretext for a direct military confrontation with NATO countries," he explained in his analysis.
According to his thesis, Kiev was at least interested in such a threatening scenario, but there is no official evidence for this. How close Vakulenko is to the Kremlin regime today cannot be independently verified. Gazprom has long been seen as a lever of Moscow to put pressure on the West through the reliability of energy supplies and offers.
Ukraine will certainly try to break the grain blockade by inviting ships flying the flag of those countries to its ports that Russia presumably does not dare to attack.
Sergei Vakulenko, Russian energy expert in "Politika"
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Russia blockade in the Black Sea: Further attacks on Ukrainian Danube ports expected
Strikingly, among the freighters that reached the Danube from the Bosporus at the beginning of August was also a ship flying the Turkish flag. The government in Ankara has comparatively great influence and contact with Moscow's ruler Vladimir Putin. A coincidence? Russia will at least continue to "bomb Ukraine's ports to limit their export opportunities," Vakulenko said.
It can be assumed that the Russian Armed Forces will try to attack the Ukrainian Danube ports of Reni and Izmail, although "the approaches to them are almost exclusively in the territorial waters of Romania, which to some extent protects the ships sailing to them". Bucharest had publicly protested after the bombing at the beginning of the month. Are Ukraine and NATO taking too big a risk? (pm)