The corridor was primarily meant to allow passage for ships stuck in the Ukrainian ports of Chornomorsk, Odesa, and Pivdennyi since the start of the full-scale invasion.
A Russian submarine and warship were damaged in the pre-dawn barrage on the Sevastopol shipyard - potentially the largest strike against Russian naval targets of the war.
On 16 August 2023, the first civilian cargo ship left the Ukrainian seaport of Odesa and, despite Russian threats, successfully reached the territorial waters of Bulgaria and then Romania using mostly Ukrainian territorial waters
One of the Ukrainian maritime drones hit a large Russian landing warship during the nighttime attack on Russia’s naval base in Novorossiysk last night.
A trio of civilian cargo ships—one each from Israel and Greece plus one with Turkish-Georgian registration—ran the Russian blockade in the Black Sea on Sunday and anchored at one of Ukraine’s grain ports on the Danube Delta.
The cruise ship Astoria Grande, carrying Russian tourists, sailed from the Georgian city of Batumi on Thursday evening, two days ahead of schedule, under pressure from local protesters.
Russia jolted world grain markets with an escalation in the Black Sea, mounting a third straight night of air strikes on Ukrainian ports and issuing a threat against Ukraine-bound vessels to which Kyiv responded in kind.