tg-me.com/Wallachian_Gazette/5990
Last Update:
🚢
3 of the 11 crew have died in this accident. Preliminary investigations revealed that the ship sank not because it struck a loose mine but because it collided with another ship, Michel, which after ramming the Tanzanian vessel, carried on her journey to the Bulgarian port of Varna.
The route of the ship that sank is unclear. Although it was supposed to arrive at the Romanian port of Sulina, it was far away from the shore, some 14 miles outside the territorial waters of Romania (the first 12 nautical miles from the shore are considered territorial waters per the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea) and sank some 26 miles off the small port of Sfântu Gheorghe, a big distance for a ship that was supposed to stop at Sulina. We also have no idea what cargo was the ship, Mohammad Z, transporting.
These missing pieces of informations as well as the ships position when it sank suggest that it was not heading towards Romania but rather to one of Ukraine's Danubian ports. It would have needed to cross the Bystroye Canal and then into the Chilia(Kilia) branch and then reach its destination.
The Bystroye Canal is a point of controversy between Bucharest and Kiev because, from the point of view of international law, Romania has exclusive rights to commercial shipping on the Danube through the Sulina Canal, also a natural branch of the Danube. The canal was widened by the British in the 1870s and once Romania took control of the area after the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878 it became the preferred way for ships to enter and leave the Danube as the Sfântu Gheorghe branch was narrow and ships risked getting stuck and the Chilia branch which formed the border with Russia at the time, represented a longer route.
The Bystroye Canal was built by the USSR in the 1950s to shorten the way between the USSR's (now Ukraine's) ports on the Danube and the Black Sea. However, the Soviets relatively quickly abandoned the canal due to how quick the Danube would silt the area meaning that constant maintenance was needed so the canal was unprofitable. After Ukrainian independence, Kiev set out to rebuild the canal and, to crush the competition from Romania, sank the Rostock ship in the Sulina Canal in 1991. The Sulina canal would be open again in 2004 with tens of millions of USDs in revenue lost to Ukraine who charged vessels more on the Bystroye Canal due to the high maintenance required.
In 2022 the Bystroye Canal became important again as ships could not reach Odessa, Nikolaev and other ports in Ukraine besides Chilia(Kilia) and Izmail without coming under fire from Russian bombs or hitting Ukrainian naval mines. Due to foreign pressure, Bucharest ignored the dredging work done by Kiev who deepened the canal allowing heavier ships to enter the Danube but this situation cannot go on forever. Sulina's traffic has decreased meanwhile the traffic on Bystroye has increased. Bucharest is losing revenue for Ukraine for nothing in return. Add to this environmental concerns regarding the flow of the Danube which tends to concentrate in the northern Chilia branch, even more now that the Bystroye canal was dug up and deepened allowing for more water to flow into the Black Sea and Romania could lose not just the shipping but also the Danube Delta itself.
🔗 https://www.dw.com/ro/ucraina-b%C3%AEstroe-nava-scufundat%C4%83-%C8%99i-interesul-rom%C3%A2niei/a-69130028
