After a 3-day pause in shipments from Black Sea and Danube River ports, Ukraine has resumed shipments with nine unloaded vessels entering Black Sea ports on Friday, October 27th.
Russia apparently dropped sea mines from aircraft in the approaches to Black Sea ports initiating the pause. These were apparently detected and deactivated by Ukraine naval forces. It appears that Russia has failed in its attempt to close exports of agricultural commodities by sea.
Apart from destroying grain storage and port handling facilities by missile attacks, Russia threatened to mine shipping channels and to attack vessels using the humanitarian corridor along the coast of Romania and Bulgaria. The intent was to raise insurance rates to prohibitive levels thereby interdicting exports.
Overt action by the Russian Federation involving merchant shipping creates the situation that NATO would pressure Turkey to allow passage of naval vessels through the Bosphorus, currently disallowed by the Montreux Agreement.