Attacks on commercial shipping in the Black Sea would doubtless send prices leaping again. Insurers would raise their rates or refuse to underwrite cargoes at all. Grain would not be the only casualty: some 2m barrels of oil and a further 1m barrels of refined petroleum products are exported through the Black Sea every day. When russia invaded Ukraine last year, the Black Sea seemed unlikely to become much of a battleground. The Ukrainian navy, after all, had only one warship, which it was forced to scuttle as Russian troops advanced on the shipyard where it was being repaired, in the city of Mykolaiv. The fact the landings never came was the first sign that Russia’s dominion over the sea was not as absolute as it seemed. A more ringing indication of that came in April of last year, when Ukraine managed to sink the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea fleet, the Moskva, using a newly developed anti-ship missile. Two months later intense Ukrainian bombardment drove the occupiers from Snake island. Will Ukraine manage to push back Russia from its ports in black sea?
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