Foreign Affairs

Ukraine’s Situation Grows Dire As Russia Continues To Hammer Ports

(Photo via Yurii Khomitskyi / Unsplash)

Repeated attacks by the Russian military are hammering Ukrainian ports so hard that the nation has become effectively landlocked, according to military analysts.

Ukrainian ports such as Odesa have long been the lifeline of the Ukrainian state; however, that time may be drawing to a close as Russian attacks on Ukrainian ports continue to escalate. The Russian attacks on Ukrainian ports include new jet-powered drones, cruise missiles and other ballistic missiles.

“Ukrainian political leadership is always motivated to escalate, despite the fact that they are destined to lose any sort of tit-for-tat, because Russia can almost always hurt Ukraine more than Ukraine can hurt Russia ” Peter Slezkine, senior fellow and director of the Russia Program at the Stimson Center, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Ukraine needs to show some kind of dynamism, to paint a picture of victory, to generate effective photos and video clips in order to maintain the interest of its external sponsors. So it’s constantly searching for some new way to inflict pain on Russia, knowing that Russia will then inflict more pain in the same area on Ukraine.”

The naval conflict in the Russo-Ukrainian war escalated sharply in July when Ukraine intensified strikes on Russian shipping in the Sea of Azov before expanding the campaign into the Black Sea.

Ukraine dramatically increased drone attacks against Russian shipping around Crimea in July, striking more than 180 vessels and other maritime targets over roughly three weeks as Kyiv opened a new front in the naval conflict, Reuters reported, citing anonymous sources in the Ukrainian military.

“Russia’s Black Sea fleet turned out to be susceptible to Ukrainian drones and pulled back, but in the mutual attacks on port infrastructure in the Black Sea, Russia clearly has the advantage because Russia has more ports,” Slezkine told the DCNF. “Ukraine is quite reliant on Odesa and access to the Black Sea, in order to get out grain and sustains its domestic economy. Although its economy is now mostly sustained externally.”

Ukrainian-made FP-1 and FP-2 drones are the backbone of Ukraine’s naval offensive, Reuters reported. The FP drones are medium-range munitions manufactured by Fire Point, a Ukrainian weapons manufacturer.

The Ukrainian 414th Separate Unmanned Systems Brigade “Magyar’s Birds,” frequently uploads videos on X showing the FP drones in action, attacking Russian shipping.

Ukraine’s drone campaign against Black Sea shipping has also affected non-Russian commercial vessels, including Turkish ships, prompting Ankara to summon Ukraine’s ambassador after two Turkish vessels were attacked near the Russian port of Tuapse, Reuters reported

“Turkey’s position matters a lot to what Ukraine can do in the Black Sea. And for Ukrainian maritime exports to remain limited (or nonviable), Russia would have to keep this up, because it’s hit port infrastructure before, and then there was a grain deal or one thing or another,” Slezkine told the DCNF. “So , as long as Ukraine has Odesa, it has a potentially important port.”

The reality of the Russian strikes on Ukraine’s port infrastructure is that it forces the Ukrainian military to divert manpower, interceptors and other munitions from forward operating units, weakening their frontline forces.

“Ukraine will be forced to use interceptors regardless of the target,” retired Marine Col. and Senior Advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies Mark Cancian told the DCNF. “The challenge with attacks on ports is that Ukraine may need to spread its defenses out, thereby leaving gaps elsewhere.”

Ukraine’s manpower situation has also deteriorated after more than four years of full-scale war, leaving the military struggling to replace battlefield losses and rotate exhausted troops.

The Ukrainian military has turned to “press gangs,” or roving groups of armed men who grab civilians from the street to press them into military service. This is practiced widely throughout Ukraine, with dozens of videos online showing the brutality of the practice.

“Odesa, Ukraine’s largest port, has operated on and off since the beginning of the full-scale invasion,” Luke Coffey, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, told the DCNF. “But with Russia’s renewed focus on the city, I’m not sure how much diversion of air defense capabilities there will be from other parts of Ukraine or along the front line. Because of Odesa’s size, population and strategic importance, the Ukrainians have prioritized the air defense of the city and surrounding area for some time.”

Both Coffey and Slezkine acknowledged that while Odesa provides a significant boost to the Ukrainian economy through grain exports, the European Union continuously props up the Ukrainian state regardless of its economic situation.

The economic damage is already becoming measurable. More than 90% of Ukraine’s agricultural exports normally move through the three deepwater ports of Greater Odesa, but intensifying Russian strikes have reduced their grain-export capacity from roughly 6 million metric tons per month to about 4 million, while four of the region’s 13 major grain terminals have suspended purchases, Reuters reported.

Ukraine is already facing a critical shortage of the interceptors needed to counter Russia’s growing missile campaign, with allies delivering only about one-third as many air-defense missiles in 2026 as they supplied in 2025, Reuters reported.

Kyiv continues to seek additional Patriot interceptors even after Washington agreed in July to grant Ukraine licenses to manufacture them domestically, while existing U.S. and European inventories have come under growing pressure from demand in Ukraine and the Middle East, according to Investing.com.

“Ukraine’s Black Sea ports play an important role in sustaining the war effort because they provide a significant source of economic revenue,” Coffey told the DCNF. “But as I mentioned above, port operations have faced periodic disruptions since February 2022, and Ukraine, with assistance mainly from its European partners, has consistently found ways to plug budget gaps throughout the conflict.”

The situation deteriorated further throughout August. Ukraine exported only about one-third of its potential agricultural volume during the month after Russian attacks effectively suspended agricultural exports through Greater Odesa, while alternative routes through the Danube, railways and the European Union lack sufficient capacity to fully replace maritime shipping, according to the Ukrainian Ministry of Agrarian Policy and Food.

Not all military analysts agree that Russia’s strikes amount to a sustained strategic bombing campaign against Ukraine’s maritime infrastructure.

“Russia has primarily engaged in a very limited form of terror bombing rather than a targeted campaign against the ports, as far as I can tell,” Eugene Gholz, associate professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame, told the DCNF. “The only targeted campaign of strategic bombing that Russia seems to have attempted heretofore is against Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, and that has had only limited effect. I do not know why Russia has not really tried to attack Ukraine’s ports so far.”

Russian strikes on Ukrainian maritime infrastructure have nevertheless increased dramatically in recent months. Russia carried out 67 attacks on seaport infrastructure in July, along with 35 attacks on civilian vessels inside ports and another 22 against ships operating in Ukraine’s maritime corridor, according to the Ukrainian Ministry for Development of Communities and Territories.

The attacks continued into August, with Russian forces striking seaport infrastructure five times during the first three days of the month alone, according to the ministry.

The loss of access to Ukraine’s deepwater ports has consequently pushed increasing amounts of cargo toward the country’s smaller Danube ports at Reni and Izmail. Roughly 80 vessels were waiting to reach the Ukrainian ports through Romania’s Sulina Canal by Aug. 31, while Ukrainian Railways estimated it could move roughly 500,000 metric tons of grain to the Danube ports each month, Reuters reported.

Those alternatives have struggled to absorb the displaced trade. Ukraine exported just 539,000 metric tons of grain between Aug. 1 and Aug. 21, compared with 1.73 million tons during the same period in 2025, while congestion and delays were costing some vessels as much as $8,000 per day, Reuters reported.

Russia has also increasingly targeted the infrastructure Ukraine relies upon to circumvent disruptions at its principal Black Sea ports. Russian forces struck export facilities in the Odesa region and the Orlivka border crossing with Romania on Sept. 1, temporarily suspending the processing of vehicles and travelers at the crossing, Reuters reported.

The widening attacks leave Kyiv defending not only the ports themselves, but also the railways, Danube facilities, border crossings and other infrastructure needed to keep Ukrainian exports moving when Greater Odesa is unavailable.

Russia’s end goal may be to completely annex the Ukrainian coastline, Slezkine said.

“Russia’s dream, of course, in this war is to deprive Ukraine of its Black Sea coast permanently,” Slezkine told the DCNF. “So I think for a lot of Russian strategists, Odessa is much more important than Kyiv. If they could take Odessa and connect with Transnistria, then Ukraine becomes a slightly larger Latvia, and then who cares? Because it’s a totally non-viable economy or military threat. But so long as it has Odessa, there is at least the viable economic future, in theory.”