Danube Delta

There's obviously lots of attacks on Ukrainian ports taking place, but not just the seaports of Chernomorsk and Odessa.

But also there's sea ports located in the Danube Delta.

So the Ukrainians have a port called the Reni.

The Reni port is located, it's where the Danube River essentially flows into the Black Sea.

At a land site, you might find a few preserved seeds or charred grain if you're extremely lucky.

at these black sea sites researchers have recovered complete samples of food storage materials nuts still in their shells seeds showing bite marks from rodents fish bones with cut marks from stone knives evidence of specific butchering techniques these materials let us reconstruct diet and subsistence patterns with precision that's usually impossible for neolithic sites one particularly remarkable find was a fishing net or rather fragments of a fishing net preserved well enough to reconstruct the knotting technique and measure the mesh size this tells us exactly what size fish they were targeting and how they were doing it it's the archaeological equivalent of finding an ancient technology manual the net's construction matches techniques still used by traditional fishers in some parts of the mediterranean suggesting these methods persisted for thousands of years because they worked Other sites have been identified off the Romanian coast near the Danube delta.

These settlements show different architectural patterns than the Bulgarian sites.

Instead of rectangular structures arranged in loose clusters, the Romanian sites have more linear arrangements, buildings positioned along what were probably the banks of ancient river channels.

A number of years ago, I was in Venice with some friends, and I was struck by another really solid daydream.

I thought, wouldn't it be fantastic to go and find where I left my original Jack the Crow, the boat, in the Danube Delta, see if it's still there.

If it is, do it up, repair it, and wouldn't it be great to sail all the way around the through Istanbul and round the coast of Greece and up to finish in Venice.

Now, I must admit, I had an extraordinarily inaccurate view of how far that was.

And it became this real vision.

And then a few years later again, I happened to have a Romanian colleague of mine going home to Romania.

I said, Ozzy, would you mind going and checking in the Danube Delta to see if my boat is still there? And very kindly, he did.

But he got back to me one October evening by phone and said, no, Sandy, I'm so sorry.

They're trying to use the ports in Romania and Bulgaria.

In the Danube Delta, for example, a Russian drone allegedly hit a Turkish ship, the Mudium, just this week.

And, you know, all of these sort of events, they sort of lead us towards thinking, you know, a Black Sea conflict situation, Andrei Sergeevich, usually somehow later on will bring Turkey to become involved at some stage because it shares such a large border with the Black Sea.

So very concerning news, but what are your thoughts on the Black Sea situation? Because before twenty twenty-six, we've never seen the situation so bad between Russia and Ukraine during this war, especially with civilian commercial vessels being hit.

Thousands fled west into Poland, the Baltics, and the territories of the Ottoman Empire.

A large group fled south into modern-day Romania, settling in the marshy isolation of the Danube Delta.

They're known today as the Lipovins, and they still maintain their distinct old-believer culture, language, and beards there today.

Within Russia itself, their situation remained precarious until a brief window of relief.

Russian drones struck the Turkish cargo vessel Mariam M.

In the Danube Delta, I believe in Romanian waters potentially, the vessel had departed from Latakia, Syria and was en route to Galati, Romania.

The ship's bridge was completely destroyed.

The vessel's captain and maritime pilot were killed with 13 others injured.

For example, the Russian ambassador to Turkey, Sergei Vershinin, basically stated that, you know, we want to, in conversation with the Turkish government, he said, we want to reach a situation where civilian commercial shipping will not be exposed to attacks because logistics is extremely important both for us and for other countries around the world.

So clearly there are some attempts there to hash up the situation.

Certainly that's been the response recently, and this was on the Danube River Delta, so basically on the territory of Romania technically, but as we've spoken about this many times with Conrad in the show, as the Ukrainian native ports are being shut down, the Ukrainians no doubt, while shipping grain and other goods for export, are to some of these ports located in Bulgaria, Romania, in the Danube Delta.

They are going to use ports and river ports belonging to other NATO nations.

And again, I say rejoice and be careful for nothing, but in all things by prayer and supplication, make your request known unto God.

And I have found myself in my moments, my darkest moments when I've been rowing along long stretches of dreary river, or just after I was captured by pirates on the Danube Delta and was terrified.

Or when I've

been walking along and feeling weary and tired, I found myself singing that anthem.

Romania didn't fire on a single drone for three years, and then it had to shoot down four in under a month.

And there were things that are looking at the Danube Delta, which are going to be very critical.

General, does 40 billion

and five years match the speed of what needs to happen right now?