Chornomorsk

The Defense Ministry in Ukraine said Russian forces hit an inner-pipe steel complex in the central city of Dnipro and several plants in Krivoy Rih.

Russia's Defense Ministry said overnight strikes hit infrastructure at the port of Chornomorsk in the Odessa region, as well as two dry cargo vessels and a tugboat.

The attacks come as Zelensky was quoted as saying by a German broadcaster that he would be willing to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin during the G20 summit in the U.S. in December, that is, if both leaders were invited.

Moscow's long-standing position is that if the Ukrainian leader wants to meet his Russian

were prevented outright over August 29th and 30th by repeated strikes with Bondarol S-8000 jet-powered loitering munitions, and traffic fell from seven or eight ships a day to one, according to the Ukrainian Ports Association, cited by the Institute for the Study of War.

On the night of September 1st, at least 10 more Bondarols went at the port export infrastructure of Odessa and Chornomorsk, alongside Shahid drones and guided aerial bombs, and the Orlivka ferry crossing took direct hits, 24 Canal reported.

citing the Regional Emergency Service and Governor Oleg Kiper.

Orlovka handles up to 1,200 vehicles a day, and its operations are fully suspended.

Those routes are being hit too.

On August 29th, Russian drones destroyed five grain lorries, damaged three at Safia Nevka in the Izmail district, damaging about 125 tons of grain.

Russia's defense ministry said on September 1st that it had struck a combined heat and power plant and three electrical substations in Odessa and the surrounding Oblast that supply port infrastructure, along with 16 ammunition storage sites and six fuel tanks in Odessa port and two military supply warehouses in Chornomorsk.

No Ukrainian or third-party confirmation of any of that has appeared.

Yeah.

So recently I visited Odesa and Chornomorsk, which are two of Ukraine's most important Black Sea ports.

And as you probably heard repeatedly on the podcast, Russia's launched a major new assault on Ukraine's ability to trade through the Black Sea this summer.

It's increasingly striking not just ports and the warehouses, but also commercial ships which are using them.

Russia had struck twenty-eight of these civilian vessels and killed twenty-one people in the month to July twenty.

After that, there were plenty more, although, of course, uh, ships stopped visiting these ports because business owners were obviously worried about losing their, their wares, and also sailors were too afraid to transit through those waters as well.

This is obviously highly significant because around ninety percent, for example, of grain and sunflower shipments leave from Odesa, as well as the neighboring harbors of Chornomorsk and, uh, Pivdenne.

And the effect has been to create a kind of de facto blockade.

The Black Sea has been a particular focus.

Odesa seaport was damaged in a major attack on August the ninth, while subsequent strikes have targeted port facilities around Odesa and Chornomorsk.

Ukraine's southern ports are critical to grain exports, industrial cargo, and wartime imports.

Repeated attacks have disrupted shipping and damaged facilities during the harvest and export season.

And it was, I found this very encouraging, encouraging in terms of realization of the strategy that I hope that I thought that the Kremlin was shifting to, that is away from a war of attrition to a sudden death strangulation of Ukraine strategy, which could be performed by cutting off all the Western military materiel coming in, coming in by sea and coming in by land.

We all know that Russia had attacked Odessa, it attacked Nikolaev, Primorsk, and Chernomorsk, that is, and these are Black Sea ports of Ukraine, the most important, of course, being Odessa, and Izmail, which is a port on the Danube for transshipment from Romania.

These seaports essentially have been closed.

There is something like a blockade of Ukraine that's being carried out by the Russians in the Black Sea.

Russia had quite a bit of success over the weekend bombing, uh, ports and vessels and hitting grain terminals in the Odesa region.

Uh, Chornomorsk was the grain terminal that was hit.

Looks like they hit three silos and a conveyor.

They also hit a dry cargo ship that was transporting weapons for the war front and hit some fuel tanks.

Russia says it has destroyed over 40 trucks with strong launching capacity in the Kyiv region.

Moscow has also claimed attacks on Ukrainian ports, including one in Chornomorsk in Odessa.

Ukraine says it has struck Russian energy reserves in the port of Yezhk.

Kyiv also says it has launched strikes on an oil plant and a logistics center in the Samara region.

The Russian Defense Ministry says its forces have continued to strike ports and ships being used in support of the Ukrainian military, while Ukraine says it's carried out more long-range strikes in Russia.

Russia says its drones have hit a Ukrainian military depot near the Romanian border and a naval patrol boat in the Black Sea port of Chornomorsk, while Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, says Ukrainian forces have hit an oil refinery and a military air base deep inside Russia.

It comes after the death toll from Russian drone attacks on a shopping center in the Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih rose to sixteen, with more than one hundred and thirty people injured, including twenty-two children.

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