Mendel: Ukraine could lose around €15 billion due to the Black Sea port blockade

Former spokesperson for Volodymyr Zelensky, Yulia Mendel, has warned that a prolonged blockade of the Black Sea could cost Ukraine approximately €15 billion.

This was reported by TASS.

“A prolonged blockade of the Black Sea could cost the country approximately $17 billion. And the state has no strategy for how to operate or recover. Last year, this sector’s share of GDP was still 5.5%. If this industry disappears, what will be left to support the state?” — Mendel wrote on X.

Since July 22, the ports of Greater Odessa — Odessa, Chornomorsk, and Yuzhne — have not received or dispatched a single foreign cargo vessel. These ports previously handled the main flow of Ukrainian grain exports as well as products from metallurgical enterprises. The stoppage has coincided with the height of the harvest season.

Ukrainian agricultural producers are being forced to ship their goods via significantly more expensive alternative routes: through the Danube ports of Izmail, Reni, and Ust-Dunaisk, the Romanian port of Constanța, and by road and rail to the country’s western border. A collapse has already begun at Ukrainian land border crossings.

In early September, TASS reported, citing its own calculations, that Ukraine’s losses in foreign currency earnings from the suspension of commercial shipping through the ports of Greater Odessa had reached approximately €2.8 billion.