Odesa's ports and Crimea's yards: the maritime front in early November 2023
A look back at three reported strikes between 4 and 8 November 2023 that placed shipping and shipbuilding at the centre of the war in the south.
What did the war in southern Ukraine look like on 10 November 2023? The reports from the preceding days pointed to a contest increasingly fought around ships, ports and the waters between them.
On 4 November 2023, Ukrainian forces struck the Zalyv Shipbuilding yard in Russian-occupied Kerch, Crimea, with cruise missiles. The strike damaged the Russian corvette Askold.
Two days later, on 6 November 2023, Russian forces attacked Odesa with drones and missiles. At least eight people were injured, and infrastructure was damaged, including the Odesa Fine Arts Museum.
On 8 November 2023, a Russian missile struck a Liberian-flagged vessel as it entered the Pivdennyi Port in Odesa Oblast. One crew member was killed and four were injured. The vessel was being used to transport iron ore to China.
What the sequence shows
Taken together, the three reports show activity on both sides concentrated on maritime targets. One was a naval vessel in a shipyard in occupied Crimea. The others were a port city and a merchant ship carrying cargo bound for China. The Odesa attacks also reached civilian sites: people were injured in the city, and a crew member died aboard the vessel.
The reports do not establish what these strikes would lead to, and it would be wrong to read a larger pattern into three events across five days. What they do record is that, by 10 November 2023, ports and shipyards in the south were among the places being hit, and that the people aboard commercial ships entering Ukrainian waters were exposed to that risk.
