Some 50 of 100 ships blocked after full-scale invasion leave Ukrainian ports – monitoring group
As of September 26, only half of the 100 ships that were blocked after the start of a full-scale invasion remained in Ukrainian ports, Andriy Klymenko, head of the Monitoring Group for Sanctions and Freedom of Navigation at the Institute of Black Sea Strategic Studies, said on Facebook.
"As of September 26, out of 100 ships that were blocked in Ukrainian ports on February 24, some 50 ships remain. Some 29 of them are in the ports of Mykolaiv region, 14 in Kherson, five in Mariupol. For various reasons, two sea vessels out of 41 that were blocked on February 24 remain in the ports of Odesa region," the message states.
It is noted that out of 50 vessels, 15 belong to ship owners from EU countries (Greece - eight, Malta - three, one vessel each from Bulgaria, Germany, Estonia, Denmark), 14 – ship owners from Turkey, and eight - from Ukraine.
Among other ship owners whose ships are blocked in Ukrainian ports are companies from Norway and China, Great Britain, Montenegro, Bangladesh, the Marshall Islands, Lebanon, Egypt, and Singapore.
The bulk carrier EMMAKRIS III, which was detained in July 2022 at the request of the Prosecutor General's Office as part of an investigation against its Russian owner, also remains in the port of Chornomorsk, according to the text of the updated database of blocked ships of the monitoring group of the Institute of Black Sea Strategic Studies and the BlackSeaNews editorial office.
At the time of the start of the full-scale invasion, there were 100 commercial ships in the sea trading ports on the Black and Azov Seas, in addition to the occupied Crimean Peninsula (excluding port fleet vessels). The ships were unable to leave the ports under the conditions of a naval blockade by the Russian Federation. Some 34 out of 100 ships belonged to ship-owning companies from EU countries (21 from Greece), another 24 belonged to ship owners from Turkey.
"Most of the ships arrived for loading at Ukrainian ports literally a day or two before the start of a full-scale war. Some of the ships at that time were undergoing repairs at the corresponding ship repair yards in the ports of Chornomorsk and Kherson," the monitoring group's report clarifies.
