The de-occupation of Snake Island allowed Ukraine to start transporting grain across the Danube to the Black Sea - and immediately revealed infrastructure problems that Ukrainians had not suspected in the recent past. It became clear that the throughput of the Romanian Constanta is significantly inferior to the throughput of Odessa, that in order to meet the needs for the transportation of Ukrainian grain, the Romanian port needs serious modernization.

There is nothing surprising in this: there has never been such a cargo flow from Constanta as from Odessa, one of the most important ports in Europe. And I think that is why Vladimir Putin is rapaciously eyeing the famous city.

What is there to the city - to the Black Sea! It can be said that the establishment of control over the Black Sea for many decades has been one of the main political tasks of the Kremlin..

Back in the 90s, under Boris Yeltsin, Russia won the right from Ukraine to keep the base of the Black Sea Fleet in the Crimea and actually annexed part of the sea coast of Georgia, establishing control over Abkhazia. Then there was the annexation of Crimea - but even before the occupation of the peninsula, the Black Sea Fleet was used in the Russian war against Georgia in 2008. And now a new stage in the implementation of Russian ambitions: the occupation of the Ukrainian south, preparations for the annexation of the Kherson region and plans for the occupation of the Mykolaiv and Odessa regions. And, of course, establishing control over the entire basin of the Sea of \u200b\u200bAzov, turning it into the “internal lake” of Russia - Russian “strategists”, again, had dreams of this since the 90s, when Russia did not allow the division of Azov between Russia and Ukraine and imposed an agreement on the joint use of the sea on Kyiv.

Moscow may believe that the Russian army will not have the opportunity to occupy all of Ukraine at this stage of the confrontation. But cutting off Ukraine from the sea is not just a desire to deprive the enemy of a large part of the economic potential, I am sure, it is also a desire to dominate the sea basin, to throw another challenge to NATO.

That is why the security of the Black Sea - and the Mediterranean as a whole - will largely depend on whether it will be possible to restore the primacy of international law and elementary justice, deprive Russia of its "

Russian sailors are the real pirates of the 21st century, who are tasked with interfering with peaceful navigation, shelling foreign cities from the decks of their ships, organizing provocations against warships of other countries. And the Black Sea, which since ancient times was called Pontus Euxinus - the Sea of \u200b\u200b\u200b\u200bHospitality, I am sure, should be delivered from those who deliberately and arrogantly violate the laws of hospitality, risking the safety and peace of all those who live on the beautiful sea shores.

Original.