The noise sounded like a faint humming coming from somewhere far away in the night. Slowly, it got closer, as if taking its time, more and more ominous. Then a wing appeared in the dark sky, just above the Ukrainian port of Reni, on the Danube, 250 kilometers southwest of Odesa. The noise grew louder as the wing suddenly plunged. A hangar exploded. Already, other hums were coming out of the darkness. Another explosion. Vadym, a docker by night and cab driver by day, had never seen a Russian kamikaze drone attack at his home in Reni. But on Monday, July 24, he had no doubt: It was indeed the famous Shahed 136 drones that were striking the docks for the first time. The bombardment lasted four hours and were filmed by a cell phone. "I didn't think it was possible here," said Vadym. Just over a week later, on Wednesday, August 2, another port on the river, Izmail, was also shelled. "Forty thousand mertric tons of grain that was due to go to China, Israel and African countries was damaged," said Oleksandr Kubrakov, Ukraine's infrastructure minister.
War has its own geography, a capacity to shine a spotlight on places that hardly anyone would have located on a map before. Reni and Izmail are such places, small ports on the bends of the river on the borders of Bessarabia, which have become strategic points, where the US ambassador to Ukraine, Bridget Brink, made an official visit as recently as three months ago. Since the Russian military blockade of the Black Sea, which is economically suffocating Ukraine, the Danube has proved to be the best diversion route for exporting Ukrainian grain, the country's main source of wealth.
Reni and Izmail may be remote and under-equipped, but they had – it was thought – one undeniable quality: security. Romania, a NATO member, lies just across the river, 200 meters away, so close that you can hear each other across the two banks. With the war in Ukraine, Bucharest reinforced its border along the river. This time, Russia has chosen to escalate. Never before had it struck so close to NATO territory, risking a more direct confrontation with Europe and the United States.
"Western states need to understand what's at stake here and help us," pleaded Maksym Maksymov, boss of the company Viking Alliance. It's no coincidence that several of his warehouses in the port of Reni have been targeted by Russian bombardments. In just six months, in the midst of the war, Maksymov built a container terminal at this end of the world, the only one in operation in Ukraine today. "It's vital infrastructure for our country, where most trade is carried out by ship," admitted Olexi Vostrikov, deputy director of the port administration. Viking Alliance exports valuable Ukrainian wheat and also imports containers of humanitarian aid from the United States Agency for International Development and the United Nations.
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