Trapped Cargo Ship Leaves Odesa Port as Russian Drones Target Grain Facilities

The first merchant ship to leave Odesa port under Kyiv’s self-declared “humanitarian corridor” for shipping was on its way to Istanbul Wednesday morning, officials said, despite earlier Russian warnings that Ukrainian commercial traffic on the Black Sea was unsafe.

"A first vessel used the temporary corridor for merchant ships to/from the ports of Big Odesa," Deputy Prime Minister Oleksandr Kubrakov said on Facebook.

The departure came as an overnight Russian attack on port facilities in the Odesa region damaged grain warehouses, officials said.

“The main target is port and grain infrastructure in the south of the region,” Gov. Oleh Kiper said on Telegram. “As a result of enemy strikes on one of the Danube ports, warehouses and granaries were damaged.”

Ukrainian air defenses shot down 11 Russian drones over the Odesa region overnight, Ukraine’s air force said, but it was unclear how many got through and hit targets. 

Russia has pounded Ukrainian port and food storage infrastructure since it pulled out of a U.N.-brokered safe-transit agreement that allowed food shipments to leave Ukraine for the world market. Kyiv’s “humanitarian corridor,” announced last week, was meant to free ships that have been stuck in Ukrainian ports since the beginning of Russia’s war.

"The corridor will be primarily used to evacuate ships that were in the Ukrainian ports of Chornomorsk, Odesa and Pivdennyi at the time of the full-scale invasion of the Russian Federation," Kubrakov said.

That fit the bill for the Hong-Kong-flagged Joseph Schulte, which has been trapped in Odesa since February 22, 2023. The ship left carrying more than 30,000 metric tons of cargo in 2,114 containers, Kubrakov said.

The cargo included "a variety of goods and products, from clothing to furniture and so on," Janina von Spalding of Bernhard Schulte Shipmanagement, told The Messenger.

The company, which co-owns the cargo vessel with a Chinese bank, said the crew were safe on board.