MOSCOW, September 30. /TASS/. Ukraine could face losses of around $17 billion due to the closure of its Black Sea ports, according to Yulia Mendel, former press secretary to Vladimir Zelensky.

"A long Black Sea blockade, metallurgists say, could cost the country about $17 billion. And there is no strategy from the state on how to work or rebuild. Last year this sector was still 5.5% of GDP. If that industry disappears, what exactly is left to hold the state up?" Mendel wrote on X.

Since July 22, the Greater Odessa ports - Odessa, Chernomorsk and Yuzhny - which handle the bulk of Ukraine’s grain and metal exports, have not received or dispatched a single foreign cargo vessel. The shipping standstill came during the peak of the harvest season. Despite the significantly higher costs of alternative logistics, Ukrainian agricultural producers have been forced to reroute shipments via the Danube River ports of Izmail, Reni, and Ust-Dunaisk, the Romanian port of Constanta, or by road and rail to the western borders. This shift has already caused a logistical collapse at Ukraine's land border crossings.

In early September, TASS calculated that Ukraine’s lost foreign currency revenue from the suspension of commercial shipping through the Greater Odessa ports had already totaled approximately $3.15 billion.