Odesa's infrastructure hasn't been damaged so far. The port city of Mykolaiv, 60 miles away, now faces nightly rocket attacks. Kherson and Mariupol have suffered enormous destruction from the Russian army. MANN: Many of Ukraine's industrial harbors are in even worse shape than Odesa. And we extremely need the food but food for a long storage, like cans, like pasta. VITNYANSKIY: There is no if because it will. MANN: Vitnyanskiy says he believes this war and Russia's blockade of the Black Sea will drag on. VITNYANSKIY: We serve about 2,000 people every day, a lot of Odesa citizen who just left without their job.
But since the war began, he's been running an aid center, helping feed displaced people and local workers idled by the blockade. He's also in the shipping and logistics business. MANN: A few streets over from the cafe, I find Nick Vitnyanskiy. SILKE: We will lose half of our GDP to the end of the year. Shifting to English, he throws up his hands and says he expects things to get even worse. MANN: "I've lost about 70% of my business," Silka says. MANN: As we're talking, the cafe's owner, Sergey Silke, overhears our conversation and chimes in. POSTNYI: For Odesa, I think it's more or less a safe place for now. They also say foreign companies, especially insurance companies, are leery of doing business here when the Russian army and navy are nearby. MANN: But both men say Ukraine's road system and small fleet of tractor-trailer trucks can't replace the container ships that once shuttled in and out of this harbor. We make the export to Romania by the trucks. SKYLAR: This week we started a new work for us. Skylar tells me his company is trying to adapt. Global food prices have already risen sharply, up 12% over the last few months according to the United Nations. Even if some farmers are able to plant this year, getting their harvest to market without this port could be nearly impossible. Ukraine is one of the major producers of wheat and sunflower seeds and other agricultural products. MANN: Both men point out that what happens here affects the entire world. A lot of our containers that must go to Ukraine are now in Romania, Turkey.
MANN: A lot of those big shipping containers down on the dock belong to his firm, which he asked NPR not to name. SERGEI POSTNYI: I'm working a container line. We're joined in the cafe by Sergei Postnyi. Before the war, global supply chains were a nightmare. SKYLAR: Before the war, it was problem, yes, but now we have a disaster. Skylar runs a logistics company, helping make sure all that stuff on the docks gets to the right place.
He slumps in his chair, looking exhausted. MANN: That's Amir Skylar, who meets me in a cafe near the harbor. It's zero for import and zero for export. There are hundreds of shipping containers here with no place to go.ĪMIR SKYLAR: We can't use our sea. I can count one, two, three large container ships that are trapped here in port by the Russian blockade.
As NPR's Brian Mann reports, that has devastated Ukraine's economy and left idle workers scrambling for help.īRIAN MANN, BYLINE: I'm standing on the waterfront in Odesa, and I can see a big part of the industrial port. But the Russian navy is also mounting a blockade of Ukraine's most important ports in the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov. Russia faces crushing sanctions designed to strangle its economy and punish President Vladimir Putin for his invasion of Ukraine.
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