The Sea Gates Are Locked. How Much Ukraine Stands to Lose From the Blockade of Odesa Ports

The strikes on the Odesa ports have put critical import and export flows at risk. Let us try to gauge the scale of the crisis.

For that, take the trends in the commodity structure of exports (see Table 1).

In January–June 2026, exports came to almost $20 billion. In the same period of 2025 the figure was a billion dollars lower. Export volumes this year grew by 4.6 percent.

Food products account for 60 percent of exports ($12.5 billion), comprised overwhelmingly of corn and sunflower oil.

For mineral products, exports are worth $1.25 billion (7.7% of the overall structure) and are mostly iron ore.

Shipments of metal products abroad accounted for 12 percent over the same period, or $2.15 billion.

Taken together, the mining and metals complex accounts for up to 20 percent of the export structure, worth $3.4 billion.

The remaining product categories are of secondary importance.

Among them, the following are worth noting:

• machinery: $818 million, or 5.8 percent;
• chemicals: $776 million, or 4.3 percent;
• wood and wood products: $984 million, or 5 percent;
• manufactured goods: $365 million, or 1.7 percent.

The Odesa ports handle the export of more than 90 percent of iron ore, 80 percent of metals and over 50 percent of agricultural shipments (and sunflower oil exports depend on port logistics far more heavily than shipments of corn, soybeans and rapeseed do).

Manufactured goods, machinery and timber were exported mainly by rail and road, so the direct impact of a blockade of the Odesa ports on these categories will be smaller.

The indirect impact, however, will be substantial because rerouting corn and oil exports onto alternative export corridors will eat into the capacity of the transport routes on the western border.

Table 1. Trends in the commodity structure of exports, $ million

Item	2024	2025		2026
	January–June	January–June	% of total	January–June*	% of total
TOTAL	19,730	18,927	100.0	19,793	100.0
Change on the same period a year earlier, %		-4.1		4.6
Of which:
Food products and raw materials for their production	12,423	11,226	59.3	12,496	63.1
Change on the same period a year earlier, %		-9.6		11.3
Mineral products	1,768	1,451	7.7	1,249	6.3
Change on the same period a year earlier, %		-17.9		-14.0
Products of the chemical and related industries	725	812	4.3	776	3.9
Change on the same period a year earlier, %		12.0		-4.4
Wood and wood products	819	945	5.0	984	5.0
Change on the same period a year earlier, %		15.4		4.2
Manufactured articles	287	322	1.7	365	1.8
Change on the same period a year earlier, %		12.1		13.3
Ferrous and non-ferrous metals and articles thereof	2,131	2,262	12.0	2,153	10.9
Change on the same period a year earlier, %		6.1		-4.8
Machinery, equipment, vehicles and instruments	952	1,093	5.8	818	4.1
Change on the same period a year earlier, %		14.7		-25.1
Miscellaneous (including informal trade)	624	817	4.3	952	4.8

Source: NBU data.

If we derive annual figures by simple extrapolation of the actual data for the first half of 2026, leaving aside the impact of the strikes on the Odesa ports, we arrive at exports of up to $40 billion for the year, of which up to $25 billion in agricultural raw materials, up to $2.5 billion in iron ore and up to $4.5 billion in metal products. These are the goods most acutely exposed to a shutdown of port logistics.

A blockade of the Odesa ports—assuming that transshipment through the Odesa and Danube ports is brought almost entirely to a halt in the second half of 2026—will mean the loss of almost 90 percent of the capacity to export iron ore (roughly $1 billion in forgone export revenue), 80 percent of the capacity to export metals (up to $1.5 billion in forgone export revenue) and up to 40–50 percent of the logistical capacity for exporting agricultural produce (between $2 billion and $5 billion in forgone export revenue).

Much here will of course depend on whether alternative export routes—rail above all—are opened up or not. Among the negative factors worth noting are these:

• the limited outbound capacity at the western border;
• the dependence of export flows on Poland’s position (it is worth recalling the Polish farmers’ protests of the past, and the factor of next year’s elections in Poland, which could again play a negative role in this context);
• a crisis unfolding on the railways in parallel with the crisis at the ports—that is, we are facing a cumulative transport and logistics crisis, not merely a blockade of the Odesa ports.

Maximum losses of export revenue could run to $7–8 billion for the second half of 2026 and to more than $15 billion on an annual basis.

Minimum losses: up to $4 billion of export revenue in August–December 2026 and up to $8 billion on an annual basis.

Broadly speaking, the “transport problem” Ukraine now faces is a multifactor one, and it turns on the following:

• how long the blockade of the Odesa ports lasts;
• the scope for using the Danube ports (which brings in the falling water level of the Danube, Russian strikes, and the risk of losing the only bridge linking Budjak with Odesa);
• the scope for substantially expanding the storage capacity of the “dry ports” in the west of the country (and whether they, too, will end up under missile attack);
• the throughput of the transport corridors on the country’s western border;
• Poland’s position on a several-fold increase in the transit of Ukrainian agricultural produce across its territory;
• the availability of spare logistics, port and transport capacity in Poland;
• the intensity of Russian strikes on Ukrainian railway infrastructure (destruction of “traction,” power substations and the like).

As for imports, the critical dependence on working port infrastructure lies with goods shipped by sea—which means, for the most part, from Asia.

In January–June 2026, imports from Asian countries (China and India above all) came to $20.438 billion, or 39.8 percent of total import deliveries (see Table 2). I would note in passing that these deliveries are growing at a breakneck pace: up 53.8 percent! (from $13.29 billion in the first half of 2025 to $20.438 billion in 2026). They have now almost caught up with imports from Europe ($21.528 billion—growth of 14.2% there).

What does Asia supply?

China supplies manufactured goods, components, energy equipment (charging stations, batteries, solar panels, transformers, generators and so on), vehicles and components for the defense industry—including for drone production, where Beijing has introduced certain restrictions that, as the export figures show, are not entirely effective.

India supplies mainly raw materials for the pharmaceutical industry and finished medicines. It is fair to say that all of our pharmaceutical companies either repackage bulk consignments of Indian medicines for retail sale or manufacture finished drugs from Indian raw materials.

All this import traffic, naturally, went through the ports, mostly those of Odesa.

EU equivalents are either far more expensive or not made in Europe at all.

If the Odesa ports are blockaded, all these goods will have to be brought in through European Baltic ports—which, given the added length of haul, means adding 20–30 percent to what such goods cost.

Ordinary people, in other words, would do well to stock up on specialist medicines and energy equipment: these categories could fall into short supply, or their price could rise sharply (as could the cost of delivery).

Table 2. Geography of Ukraine’s imports

Region	January–June 2025		January–June 2026*
	$ million	% of total	$ million	% of total	% of the same period a year earlier
TOTAL	40,800	100.0	51,294	100.0	125.7
Europe	18,849	46.2	21,528	42.0	114.2
Asia	13,290	32.6	20,438	39.8	153.8
The Americas	2,891	7.1	3,083	6.0	106.6
of which the US	2,201	5.4	2,310	4.5	105.0
Africa	522	1.3	566	1.1	108.4
Australia and Oceania	160	0.4	188	0.4	117.5
Memo item:
EU countries	16,864	41.3	19,662	38.3	116.6
CIS countries	341	0.8	367	0.7	107.6

Source: NBU data.

It is worth recalling at this point that back in 2022 the government should have drawn up a logistics model that allowed for the possibility of a complete blockade of Ukraine’s ports at any moment in the war.

Several European logistics projects existed that Ukraine could have used to diversify its logistical options. Chief among them is Rail Baltica, being laid on European gauge from the Baltic states into Poland through the Suwałki corridor; in its original form the project concentrated mainly on passenger traffic and had no commercial component.

That component could have been supplied by Ukraine, by building several European-gauge rail branches out of junctions such as Kovel and Lviv (which would have turned into “dispatch” transport hubs) and connecting them to Rail Baltica on Polish territory. That would have given us rapid access not only to the Polish ports (Gdańsk) but to the Baltic ones as well (Klaipėda, Riga). Ukraine would then have kept its access to “big water” through an outlet to the Baltic Sea.

Beyond that, projects should have been developed for networked, decentralized processing of agricultural raw materials (biofuel production above all), thereby cutting physical export volumes by raising value added—and reducing the use of imported fuel through consumption of domestically produced biofuel.

Real steps in these directions are, of course, all but absent.

What business needs today is support in the form of affordable credit, and state support on transport tariffs.

Instead, against the backdrop of this crisis, the National Bank is raising its key policy rate from 15 to 15.5 percent (even though inflation here is pronouncedly non-monetary and is cost-push inflation).

And the government is preparing a 30 percent rise in rail tariffs in August. That will only deepen the crisis in the real sector of the economy.

That said, our economic model is shifting further and further toward a service-and-military structure (a dominant services and trade sector with a small supplementary block of defense-industry enterprises). For a model of that kind, the importance of export corridors will keep shrinking.

And the lobbying weight of a few multinational grain traders will help find a “free window” for exporting agricultural commodities. The government’s decision to lower minimum purchase prices makes it clear that the logistics problems will be resolved at the expense of the domestic producer—the farmers, who will have no such “export window.” This, one might say, is by now the traditional approach.