4 August 2026
FESCO, one of Russia’s largest transportation groups, announced it has stopped accepting orders for shipments across the Black Sea following the sinking of its container ship, the Yanina. Fesco is working on additional safety measures and exploring alternative delivery options. These are limited, and logistics professionals fear this will likely result in further traffic jams at Far Eastern ports.
The Yanina, which had a capacity of approximately 1,000 containers, sank on the night of August 1. On the night of August 4, naval drones attacked the merchant vessel Nadezhda, which was en route from Samsun, Turkey, to Novorossiysk with a cargo of fruits and vegetables, as well as another vessel sailing from Turkey (it remained afloat). “As we feared, the Novorossiysk route is finished,” says an importer of household chemicals and home goods from China. He notes that Fesco was one of the largest Russian operators on this route, along with the Delo Group.
Back in March, when the war in the Middle East began and the Strait of Hormuz was closed, representatives of Delo Group warned that Far Eastern ports could face a surge in shipments this year comparable to 2022, when all imports flooded through that route. Now, Russian imported cargo has even more reasons to move to the Far East, argues an employee of a major logistics company. That boom overwhelmed ports and the Trans-Siberian Railway, leading to months-long delivery delays, he notes. “And this scenario could also repeat itself.”
But there’s no choice. “The halt to container shipping through Novorossiysk means that the bulk of imports will go primarily to ports in the Far East and St. Petersburg. There are also rail and road routes, but they’re still significantly behind in terms of volume, and St. Petersburg is also unsafe. Firstly, the shortest route from China goes through the Strait of Hormuz, which, you know, is a problem, and secondly, drones are attacking St. Petersburg ports,” the forwarder says.
Shipments via Novorossiysk were already challenging: in July and August, it was difficult to find space for containers, and there was simply nothing to replace the Yanina, according to a freight forwarder working with international shipping. “Due to the attacks on ships in June and July, the route became unpredictable in terms of delivery times. We’ve been discouraging clients from using it for over a month now,” adds his colleague. Previously, attacks had primarily targeted bulk carriers carrying grain and tankers carrying oil products. Ship schedule monitoring shows that the number of large vessel voyages from Novorossiysk in July decreased by 38% compared to May, including oil tankers by 50% and grain bulk carriers by 46%.
THATS A BIG BLOW FOR THE NAZIS.