BUCHAREST (Reuters) – Romania said on Thursday it will clear customs for up to 30 ships waiting to enter Romania from Ukrainian ports on the Danube River over the next two days, a sign that trade has not halted despite a Russian attack on Ukraine’s main river port.
Ukraine is one of the world’s top grain exporters and Russia has attacked its agricultural and port infrastructure for more than two weeks after refusing to extend a year-old safe passage grain corridor brokered by the United Nations and Turkey.
Romanian President Klaus Iohannis said Russia’s continued attacks against Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure on the Danube amounted to war crimes.
Traffic across the river is the last waterborne route out of Ukraine for its grain exports, since Russia effectively reimposed its de facto blockade, shutting Ukraine’s Black Sea ports last month.
Before Russia pulled out of the safe passage corridor, the Danube ports accounted for around a quarter of Ukraine’s grain exports. Grain is loaded onto barges, shipped downriver through territorial waters of NATO-member Romania, and onwards from Romania’s Black Sea port of Constanta.
Commercial ship tracking data shows the river and its mouth backed up with vessels trying to reach and exit the Ukrainian ports.
“We are trying to handle these clusters as best we can, to relieve navigation congestion on the Danube,” Florin Uzumtoma, the navigation director for Romania’s Danube administration agency, told Reuters.
“We will clear around 30 ships in two days, at least 12 today, if not 14, and the rest tomorrow.”
Uzumtoma said the administration cleared record high numbers of ships coming from Ukrainian inland ports in May and June, of over 477 per month.
“May and June were peaks, and we expect August to have a peak as well, despite everything,” he said.
In late July, the general director of the Danube Commission, an intergovernmental organization which manages navigation on the river, told Reuters Ukrainian inland ports need to be protected from air attacks to rebuild trust and ensure grain exports can continue.
(Reporting by Luiza Ilie; Editing by Peter Graff)
