In Ukraine, a new misfortune - under the arches of the Crimean bridge being built by Russia, large-tonnage ships will not be able to pass, which means that Ukrainians will not receive more revenue. This was stated by the director of the Mariupol Sea Commercial Port Alexander Oleinik. His words are quoted by Ukrainian media. "Through the Kerch-Enikalsky canal to the port of Mariupol will not be able to pass 144 ships with which we used to work. The Russian Federation has issued an official document that under the arches of the Kerch bridge from now on can not pass ships over 33 meters, "said the Mariupol. He noted that the port lost the opportunity to earn money on large-tonnage ships and multimillion-dollar contracts "left" for Odessa, while local products shipped in Mariupol would become more expensive due to transportation by land transport to Odessa harbor. And this is not the first cry from the side of Nezalezhnaya concerning the dimensions of our transport crossing through the Kerch Strait. So in this January, the head of the commercial service of the Mariupol Commercial Sea Port, Igor Barsky, already lamented that because of the Crimean bridge in this Ukrainian city located on the shore of the Sea of ??Azov in the part of the Donetsk region that is controlled by Kiev, large tankers such as Panamax. "The bridge cut Mariupol from the markets. South-East Asia, Vietnam, South Korea, Malaysia - this is the direction of the US, the United States itself, Honduras, Mexico. All these directions practically disappeared, because they were transported on large ships, well, say, Panamax type. Something remains, but what has gone from us, it's sad, and it will not return, will never come back, "complained Barsky. According to his calculations, the port will incur multi-million losses. "Million tons of pig iron and 300-500 thousand tons of metal products that went to the southeast, to China, Vietnam and Korea. That is about 1.5 million tons of cargo or 250 million hryvnia net profit. To work without losses, now we need, at least, to load 350 thousand tons per month. For comparison, we used to transship up to one and a half million tons for the same period, "he stressed.. According to the agency Kryminform, the Panamax tanker has a draft slightly more than 12 m, and the average depth of the Azov Sea is 7.4 meters.

The depth of the Kerch-Enikalsky canal through which the Crimean bridge passes is 9.7 meters. For navigation on it vessels with a length of up to 252 m and a draft of not more than 8 meters. It is noted that the depth at the berth of the Mariupol port is also 9.75 m, but in recent years it has decreased. In this regard, the Ukrainian authorities began urgent dredging. Meanwhile, Rosmorrechflot says that the transit of vessels along the Kerch-Enikal canal in 2017 increased by 25.4% - to 19,034 passes, which is a record from 2014.