Signal No. 123 · Zero ships at Odesa, nets at Novorossiysk

No commercial vessel has entered the Odesa region's ports in August, on Kpler tracking data reported by the Financial Times. In July about 15 ships a day were calling; by the end of the month it was one or two; this month, none. The region holds all three of Ukraine's remaining deepwater ports. Dmytro Barinov, president of the Association of Ports of Ukraine, said the intensity of attacks would make it nearly impossible to export this year's grain harvest, and that even operators who can afford war-risk insurance are declining the run: "It's less about money. It's a question of life and death."

What stopped the traffic is a targeting change. Since early July Russia has struck civilian vessels heading to and from Ukraine, not only port infrastructure: the Turkish-owned Golden Leo was sunk on 19 July with ten dead, and Andrey Stavnitser, chief executive of TIS, Ukraine's largest private port operator, says Russian forces now deliberately aim for vessels' bridges, where crews concentrate — "They don't want to disable the vessels. They want to kill crew members." Lloyd's List called the Black Sea "shipping's deadliest theatre" last week, citing reports of at least 23 seafarers killed in July. At TIS's Pivdennyi terminal, two ships show direct bridge hits, air-raid alerts run 15 to 18 a day, and the workforce has fallen to about 2,900 from roughly 4,500 before the war. The campaign did not pause for the reporting: overnight into Thursday, Russian strikes set port infrastructure in the Izmail district burning — the same wave during which a drone crossed into Romanian airspace, covered below.

The cargo backing up behind the closure is measured. Barinov puts the unsold carryover from the previous crop at at least 10 million tonnes, against storage that cannot hold it while the new harvest moves north through the autumn. Stavnitser estimates Ukraine's western land routes can move about 12 million tonnes of cargo a year, against roughly 40 million tonnes of grain alone needing export from this season, before steel and containers. Economists cited by the FT put the cost of a complete Black Sea shutdown at 1 to 1.5 per cent of Ukrainian GDP.

The other coast is adapting rather than open. The Caruzo, a 28-year-old tanker sanctioned by the EU and UK, left the Black Sea through the Bosphorus on Tuesday with anti-drone netting draped over its bridge and water tanks hung off the hull; a second sanctioned tanker, the Rizvel, is sailing the Sea of Marmara under similar cover. Airbus satellite imagery shows netted frames around the Novorossiysk naval base, with booms and barges blocking the military harbour entrance — a measure in place since March 2024. The two grain terminals suspended after Tuesday night's strike, with 15.6 million tonnes of combined annual export capacity, had not resumed as of Thursday. Ukraine's claim of four warships damaged in that strike remains its own accounting; the FT could not independently corroborate it.

The Orsknefteorgsintez refinery in Russia's Orenburg region, hit by a Ukrainian drone strike on 11 August, has shut down completely, regional governor Yevgeny Solntsev said on Thursday. "Shrapnel damaged key infrastructure that cannot currently be repaired. The equipment is imported, and due to sanctions, repairs could take up to six months," he posted, adding: "We are preparing for a worst-case scenario and will have to rely on fuel supplies brought in from outside the region." The plant, near the Kazakh border, has an annual crude capacity of six million tonnes and produces petrol, diesel, aviation fuel, fuel oil and bitumen.

The shortage is already administrative. Solntsev said 80 per cent of the region's 287 filling stations are operating, with priority given to emergency and specialised vehicles, and traffic police and volunteers managing queues. Wednesday's reporting had recorded a halted plant; Thursday gave the halt a duration and a cause, on the governor's own account.

The federal cabinet adopted a reform of the laws governing the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND, the foreign intelligence service) and the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz (BfV, the domestic security service) on Wednesday. The bills would authorise the services to take active protective measures in narrowly defined cases where no other agency can act effectively — the government's own example is shutting down a foreign server from which a cyberattack is imminent. The bills also permit AI-based analysis of collected data, and let the BND retain communications content for up to six months and traffic data for up to twelve in strategic collection. Interior minister Alexander Dobrindt described the change as developing Germany's agencies into "real intelligence services", and the government's stated rationale is espionage, sabotage and hybrid attack.

The compensating change is oversight consolidation. The Unabhängiger Kontrollrat (Independent Control Council) absorbs the functions of the G10 Commission, gains jurisdiction over all federal intelligence services, and must approve particularly intrusive individual measures in advance. The bills go to the Bundestag after the summer recess.

Romanian defence ministry radars detected five aerial targets near Izmail, on the Ukrainian bank, at 01:27 on Thursday during Russian strikes on the Odesa region. One entered Romanian airspace about two kilometres south of Pardina and flew for roughly ten minutes along the Chilia branch of the Danube before exiting toward Ukraine some 13 kilometres southwest of Chilia Veche; explosions were reported on the Ukrainian side after it left. Two F-16s scrambled from the 86th Air Base at Borcea, and an RO-Alert went to northern Tulcea. At 09:02 a second target appeared near the river border and two more F-16s went up at 09:20; that incursion lasted about two minutes. Neither intruding aircraft was engaged, and no ally has requested North Atlantic Council consultations.