By Jonathan Saul
LONDON (Reuters) -Almost 30 ships dropped anchor near Ukraine’s crucial Izmail port terminal after Russia destroyed grain warehouses on the Danube river on Monday, data showed, although it was unclear exactly what had caused them to stop.
Monday’s pre-dawn Russian air strikes wounded seven people and hit infrastructure along the Danube, a vital alternative route for Ukrainian grain since the demise last week of a year-old deal allowing safe exports via the Black Sea. Kyiv said the attack was an expansion of an air campaign Russia launched last week after pulling out of the grain deal.
According to Reuters calculations, based on ship tracking data from analytics company MarineTraffic, some 29 vessels, which also included chemical tankers, had stopped around Izmail.
A further three vessels had also dropped anchor along the waterway leading to the terminal of Reni-Odesa, the data showed.
There was no immediate comment from Ukrainian authorities.
Insurance industry sources have said war risk cover for Ukraine’s ports that were part of the previous grain deal had been suspended. On Monday, three sources said some providers were also reviewing whether to continue to provide cover for Danube ports.
“The premiums for those that are still quoting is going to go up,” one source said.
Since the collapse of the grain corridor deal and the increased targeting of ports and infrastructure by Russia, war risk underwriters were “forming their own independent views and deciding what is it is they are prepared to underwrite,” David Smith, head of hull and marine liabilities at insurance broker McGill, told Reuters.
“The difficulty here is that unlike a rateable commodity, insurance costs for Ukraine right now are un-modellable.”
(Reporting by Jonathan Saul in London and Olena Harmash in Kyiv, additional reporting by Carolyn Cohn in London; editing by Philippa Fletcher)
