The Ukrainian Navy patrol boat zipped across the Black Sea, its double-barreled, 25-millimeter machine gun locked on the horizon. The enemy, Russia, was nowhere in sight, yet ever-present. In the command room, Captain Mykhailo and his crew scanned screens showing color-coded zones marking Russian mine-laden waters and red arrows tracking drones prowling the area.
The crew’s mission was to defend the waters off Odesa, Ukraine’s largest Black Sea port city, and keep them safe for commercial traffic. It has been grueling work — clearing Russian mines by day, shooting down drones by night — but after more than a year of patrols alongside other Ukrainian navy vessels, they have succeeded.
The Russian Navy has been pushed far from Ukrainian shores, allowing Ukraine’s commercial shipping to rebound to near prewar levels. On Tuesday, the fruits of Captain Mykhailo’s efforts materialized on the horizon: the silhouette of a 740-foot, Panama-flagged ship gliding toward a Ukrainian port to be loaded with grain.
“Big ship. Nice,” said Captain Mykhailo, speaking on the condition that only his first name and rank be used, in keeping with Ukrainian military rules.
Kyiv and Moscow committed to a cease-fire on the Black Sea last month during separate U.S.-mediated talks, but Ukraine’s military and commercial achievements in those waters have led many in Odesa to ponder this question: Does Ukraine have anything to gain from such a truce?
Despite the cease-fire commitment, the countries are still negotiating whether or how it will come into force. And navy officers and business owners in Odesa have used the delay to weigh the deal’s pros and cons. A cease-fire could spare the ports from Russian drone and missile strikes, but it might also mean relinquishing Ukraine’s strategic advantage at sea, perhaps the only area of the battlefield where it holds the upper hand.
“I don’t want a cease-fire,” said Tariel Khajishvili, the head of Novik LLC, a Ukrainian shipping agent operating in Odesa. “The only side that wants a cease-fire is Russia because they no longer control the Black Sea.”
Ukraine’s skepticism has only deepened with Moscow’s conditions for a truce: the lifting of some Western economic sanctions and a return to a previous U.N.-backed deal that allowed Russia to control commercial ships leaving Ukrainian ports for weapons inspections — two demands that are non-starters for Kyiv.
“Why should we make concessions now? We’ve effectively closed the Black Sea,” Pavlo Palisa, a senior military adviser to President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, told reporters last week, pointing to Kyiv’s success in pushing Russian ships out of key parts of the sea.
Deep mistrust also persists between the countries. Both sides have agreed in principle to temporarily halt strikes against energy infrastructure, only to accuse each other of violations.
It remains unclear if a cease-fire in the Black Sea will ever take effect. Ukrainian military officials have noted that Russia has refrained from attacking Ukrainian ports since last month’s talks, aligning with one of Kyiv’s main demands, but they caution that it is too soon to call it a truce.
That Ukraine can now afford to reject a cease-fire in the Black Sea speaks volumes about the drastic shift in fortunes there.
Shortly after Russia launched its full-scale invasion three years ago, its navy ships came within 15 miles of Ukraine’s coast, close enough to fire at it directly. Captain Mykhailo, 27, recalled a strike that “destroyed a reconnaissance station” on the southern outskirts of Odesa. In the city, residents filled sandbags to fortify defensive positions, bracing for an assault.
Russia never managed to breach Odesa. But its navy controlled enough of the Black Sea to blockade Ukrainian ports, choking the country’s economy and threatening global food security because Ukraine is a major grain exporter.
A U.N.-brokered deal in July 2022 reopened a shipping corridor for Ukrainian exports, but only under a deal allowing Russia to inspect all commercial ships for weapons. Kyiv said Moscow deliberately slowed inspections to strangle trade. After a year, barely two dozen ships were using the corridor each month.
Russia withdrew from that deal in July 2023, complaining about the same economic sanctions it now seeks to have lifted, and threatened all commercial ships heading to and from Ukraine.
To restart exports, Ukraine began a campaign to drive back Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, using sea drones and missiles to destroy or damage more than a quarter of its major warships, according to British defense intelligence services. The assaults forced Russia’s fleet to retreat to the eastern part of the sea, far from Ukrainian shores, allowing Ukraine to secure a new shipping corridor that hugs its coast before entering the territorial waters of NATO members.
Captain Mykhailo said his patrol boat — an Island-class vessel donated by the United States in 2021 — accompanies commercial ships sailing off Ukrainian shores, “providing safety from the mines, from the air attacks of Russia.”
More ships now travel through the new corridor than during the U.N.-backed agreement. Black Sea food exports are also nearing prewar levels. Last year, Ukraine shipped 42 million metric tons of grain and oilseed, roughly 80 percent of its prewar volume, according to data compiled by the Ukrainian investment firm Dragon Capital.
Against that backdrop, experts see little benefit for Ukraine in a Black Sea cease-fire.
A return to the U.N.-backed agreement, as requested by Russia, “may reverse all the success of the Ukrainian corridor secured by the Ukrainian military, especially if vessels’ inspections are reintroduced,” said Natalia Shpygotska, a senior analyst at Dragon Capital. “I can’t see why Ukraine should accept” that demand, she added. “It makes no sense.”
All Ukraine could gain from a cease-fire would be an end to Russian strikes on its ports, experts say. Those attacks have damaged several ships and destroyed numerous containers and grain silos. At the peak of the assaults, in the second half of 2023, the export capacity of Odesa’s ports dropped by up to 20 percent, according to Yurii Vaskov, Ukraine’s former deputy minister of infrastructure.
Capt. Dmytro Pletenchuk, a Ukrainian navy spokesman, said that “for Ukraine, a cease-fire in the Black Sea primarily means stopping attacks on port infrastructure so that our grain corridor can operate without disruption.”
“There is nothing more that Russia can offer us in this agreement,” he said during an interview in Odesa.
That offer, however, was absent from the White House statements announcing the Black Sea cease-fire last month.
Andrii Klymenko, the head of the Black Sea Institute of Strategic Studies, said he did not expect the two sides to ever establish a maritime truce given their conflicting demands. He suspects that Russia wants to use the truce to move some of its ships back into the central part of the Black Sea, something Kyiv has already warned would prompt counterattacks.
Back on Captain Mykhailo’s boat, a cease-fire feels as distant as ever. Iron boxes of machine-gun rounds sit ready to be used on the deck. On Tuesday night, the crew emptied several of them, firing at Russian drones streaking toward Odesa and its outskirts.
“We unfortunately failed to bring them down,” Captain Mykhailo said, though none appeared to have hit the ports that night, according to the Ukrainian authorities.
“For me, nothing changes,” he added. “It’s fighting as usual.”
Daria Mitiuk and Maria Varenikova contributed reporting.
