‘The war had come to us too’: how Ukraine’s Danube ports became vital hubs – and targets

It had been hundreds of years since the world paid much attention to the Danube river port of Izmail at the edge of the estuary that now separates Romania and Ukraine.

The Russian and Ottoman empires traded blows here in the 18th century, and one epic battle in 1790 – followed by a bloody massacre of civilians – was so central to Moscow’s concept of its military power that it was glorified in the country’s first unofficial national anthem.

Then the area slipped back into relative obscurity, traded back and forth between competing powers, a smuggler’s paradise of sprawling wetlands and loosely policed borders.

Until Vladimir Putin launched a new imperial war, and tried to close the Black Sea to Ukrainian shipping. The rusting Soviet-era docks and silted up shipping channels in Izmail and neighbouring Reni became globally important overnight.

Ukraine produces about 10% of the world’s wheat, feeding hundreds of millions of people. These Danube ports, in a historic cultural melting pot known as Bessarabia, are currently the only place its vast harvest can be reliably loaded on to ships for export.

That has revived the dying local economy, but also, more than 200 years after the famous siege of Izmail, put it squarely back in the sights of Moscow’s generals, with both ports being hit repeatedly this summer.

“After the first strike people were shocked. The war had come to us too,” said Reni’s mayor, Ihor Plekhov. “We needed to prepare shelters.”

Until then violence had reached this sleepy borderland only by displacement. Its roads filled up with thousands of trucks headed to the port, and its houses and apartments with thousands of refugees from areas closer to the frontline.

They all thought their stretch of river was effectively shielded by Nato, because it sits across the Danube from Romania, a member of the alliance. The river is about 5oo metres wide here, the international border runs down the middle, and a few hundred metres is a narrow margin of error for military targeting.

But Moscow’s desire to choke off Ukraine’s grain trade apparently sidelined any concerns about triggering an escalation of hostilities with Nato, and in July, the first missile and drone attacks hit grain warehouses in the port.

The air raids have only intensified since then, and this week Romania confirmed it had found drone debris on its territory.

Russia may even have exploited the border by sending kamikaze drones up the river just inside Ukrainian airspace, Oleg Kiper, military administration head for Odesa, told the Guardian at the end of August.

“They were flying very very close,” he said of early raids, adding they were just two or three hundred metres from the border at times, making it hard for Ukraine to use air defences.

“We understood if we hit these drones, our weapons and maybe some destroyed parts of the drones could fall on Romanian territory. Maybe Russians wanted to provoke Nato countries or maybe they just did it without any analysis or preparations.”

Authorities were braced for more strikes, but also hoping for better protection. “I asked the president to help us with much more air defence for Izmail. We are in touch and normally he responds to our requests,” said Kiper.

The stakes couldn’t be higher in the fight to keep the ports open. The hunger of millions, the economic stability of many more and the Ukrainian economy all hang in the balance.

Unlikely hub

Bessarabia may have a place in Ukraine’s collective imagination – the famous central market in Kyiv is named for the region – but got little attention from authorities before last year, Plekhov said.

“Bessarabia was always on the edge of Ukraine. The government and the state did nothing to develop Ukrainian identity here, they didn’t invest. We couldn’t even get Ukrainian language TV here. We asked for retransmission towers but they didn’t care.”

Geographically and culturally it could hardly have seemed less prepared, or suited, to replace Odesa – a wealthy cultural and trade hub with a deep Black Sea harbour that handled up to 7m tonnes of cargo a month – as a major logistics hub.

The Danube ports are reached by a single road, that veers into Moldova for a stretch, an unofficial “transit corridor” that predates the war. The only bridge that stays inside Ukrainian territory was bombed by Russia.

Border guards on the single track road count passengers on cars going into and out of this transit zone; men trying to escape conscription regularly jump out of vehicles and vanish on foot.

It’s another three hours’ slow drive down a single lane road, past wetlands and lakes, to Reni or Izmail. They have few warehouses for grain, or lorry parks, so the vehicles line up in the thousands along the small country roads, transforming the landscape of reedbeds and sunflower fields into an industrial parking lot.

Reni had been particularly badly affected by the collapse of the Soviet Union, because although the port was larger than Izmail’s, the railways leading to it came through Moldova. Shipments were choked off by the new border, and river trade dwindled.

On a good month, before 2022, Reni handled perhaps 200,000 tonnes of cargo, and port authorities owed the city millions of dollars in unpaid taxes and fees.

“The port was dying,” Plekhov said. Residents, many ethnic Romanians or Bulgarians, often had stronger ties across those borders than to other parts of Ukraine. “The infrastructure was in a bad condition.” Larger, more famous Izmail did slightly better.

Then Russia’s troops crossed the border, stifling Black Sea trade. “It was like authorities remembered, ‘Oh, we have Reni port as well, let’s make use of it’,” Plekhov says with a smile.

Ukraine’s grain traders, big companies and smaller operations, all sprang into action to repair the ports and build new infrastructure. One of the country’s biggest companies, Nibulon – whose boss had been killed by a missile strike on his home – built a new terminal in Izmail in three months. The debt to Reni city council was paid off.

Together Danube river ports now handle 3m tonnes of exports, including grain and large quantities of sunflower oil – shipped out on well-cleaned tankers that bring in fuel.

It is a vital gateway, but less than half of what Odesa processed, and cannot be increased much further, even if Russian attacks don’t deter already wary shipping companies.

Vessels reach the river through a dredged channel known as the Sulina canal that emerges into Romanian territorial waters. Its mouth is crammed these day with ships waiting to sail not only to Ukraine, but also to other countries on the river – Hungary, Serbia, Slovakia and Moldova.

“Even now there are lots of vessels waiting to enter the Danube, from several days to weeks,” Kiper said. And when water levels fall, the ports can’t handle as much cargo.

“One key problem is the depth of the channel. A few months ago the water line was one and a half metres higher than it is now.” Then vessels could load between 5,000 and 7,000 tonnes; now in lower water they can ship less than half that.

Some of that pressure on the Danube will fall away when the war ends, and Odesa reopens. But traders expect the new port infrastructure will stay in regular use, bringing an economic dividend that may help reduce crime and smuggling.

It would also strengthen cultural changes binding this borderland more closely to the rest of Ukraine. Ukrainian-language TV has arrived, a statue of the Russian general Alexander Suvorov, who won the 18th-century battle for Izmail, has been removed from its plinth, and young men and women from the area are dying to prevent his successors returning.

“A lot of people from this area joined the armed forces of Ukraine as volunteers. On their leave, they tell their friends and relatives, ‘Listen, man, I’m fighting for Ukraine’,” Plekhov said. “I’m ready to explain everything; you have to support Ukraine.”