106 (46) days left in the Black Sea Grain Initiative,
868 (+5) ships outbound carrying 26,671,783MT,
786 (+3) ships delivered carrying 22,872,827MT.
02Apr
At sea but not yet delivered, we currently have corn leading the way with 2.4Million MT, over 3x the next closest grain, wheat at 734K MT.
Five ships left Ukraine on 02Apr, inspections reported today were:
Inbound 02Apr 1
Outbound 02Apr 3
One ship moved into Odesa area ports. Five ships are inspected and waiting to transit the humanitarian corridor. There are 14 ships in the Odesa area ports. #MyPrecious
A weekend tradition, the inspection numbers: The March inspections per day did rise to 6.1 but still just over half of the October height of 11.3. The MT/Ship was higher at 44,346.
5-Day Western Black Sea Forecast: Nothing above threshold limits next 5 days albeit choppy April 4 and 5.
“WFP needs to raise $23 billion to help those 350 million people. Right at this stage, I’ll be surprised if we get 40 percent of it, quite frankly,” says David Beasley, the head of the U.N.’s World Food Program. washingtonpost.com/world/2023/04/…
Imagine all your farm equipment, likely leased, disappearing in the blink of an eye. Thanks to @Mylovanov for telling this story.
Ships sailing through conflict zones are required to carry War Risk Insurance. For a while when the Ukrainian Corridor started it was so expensive that Ukraine had to create and fund their own insurance in order to make it affordable for ships to operate…
*Side note, ships that are stateless or flagless nullify their insurance. Most Russian Shadow Fleet tankers either don't have insurance (of any type) or it's void.*
On 28Nov2025 @ServiceSsu and @UA_NAVY used upgraded Sea Baby USV’s to strike two Russian Shadow Fleet vessels in the Black Sea, KAIROS (IMO 9236004) and VIRAT (IMO 9832559).
As Michelle notes, Shadow Fleet vessels are a problem looking for a place to happen as almost all are old, poorly maintained, unregistered, and sailing without insurance. These two ships are consistent transporters of Russian crude and were sailing empty.
Both attacks occurred in international waters but within the Turkish Exclusive Economic Zone. (This is a legal term and denotes that the attacks were not in Turkish waters.)
Again last night (and tonight) Russia attacked Odesa with shaheds and missiles. Thankfully no one died.
An update on Ukrainian grain prices and market factors. Prices are slowly rising as internal demand competes with export demand. latifundist.com/novosti/68707-…
Ukrainian and EU agriculture ministries met this week to investigate ways to increase Ukraine’s exports to the EU. As part of this project, Ukraine has committed to achieving compliance with EU production standards by 2028. ukrinform.ua/rubric-economy…
These are the kinds of rolling outages that we have seen in past winters, but typically they haven’t started until much later in the season. Russia’s strikes are effective but Ukrainians have three winters of practice and preparation for these outages.
One ship was assessed as delivered today, we have 19 ships left to deliver. A quick count shows that at least 14 ships sailed into Odesa Area ports in the past 24 hours.
The Rundown
Ukraine has announced a War Risk compensation mechanism for businesses today. In the shipping industry, Ukraine’s War Risk Insurance did not replace private insurance offerings but instead made pricing more competitive which encouraged trade more broadly. Similarly this insurance is expected to allow businesses to move forward with new funding and investment. kmu.gov.ua/en/news/uriad-…
That’s right, we finally hit a day with zero deliveries. More of these will happen as we only have 20 ships left to deliver…you may even see us take a day or two off here and there. Regardless, traffic continues consistently in and out of Odesa.
The Rundown
Last night’s large Russian missile and shahed attack hit the southern Odesa port of Izmail, destroying both port and energy infrastructure. blackseanews.net/read/236613