The defence ministry's account, as carried by Kommersant, names 2 dry-cargo ships and unloading infrastructure at Pivdennyi, which Russian statements still call Yuzhny, plus fuel tanks at Chornomorsk it says were meant for supplying the Ukrainian army. Reuters' rendering of the same ministry's claims counts more: 3 cargo vessels and a tanker at Pivdennyi, and another cargo ship at Odesa. The two counts do not meet, and neither is independently verifiable; Reuters says as much. No Ukrainian account of the damage had surfaced in the wires we read by Wednesday morning.
The pattern beats the tally. Kommersant dates the campaign to mid-July and records a separate strike at the same port the night before. Ukraine's export machinery is being worked over at the docks, ship by ship.
The busiest oil route of Central Asia now depends on a text nobody will confirm exists.
Russia's own shore mirrors it. The three grain terminals at Novorossiysk that handle roughly half of the country's wheat exports have not restarted since the attacks of 11 to 13 August; the freshest report we can find still has them down, and a sweep built to catch a restart came back empty. The Caspian Pipeline Consortium, whose marine terminal sits in the same stretch of coast, has now said nothing in its own name for 27 days.
What still works is priced like a war zone. Breakwave Advisors' 24 August note has Suezmax earnings for CPC loadings doubling in a month, from $194,000 to $399,000 a day, with the additional war-risk premium up from 0.65% to 1.5% of hull value. The same note puts CPC flows since July at an average of 1.37 million barrels a day, against nearly 2 million in June.
What keeps that lane open is a promise, and a narrow one. The carve-out reported by the Financial Times on 12 August covers CPC infrastructure and non-Russian cargo; a tanker that loads Russian oil steps outside it, as the Skiros showed. Neither Astana, nor Moscow, nor Kyiv has acknowledged the arrangement through 26 August. The busiest oil route of Central Asia now depends on a text nobody will confirm exists.
Harvest season is loading both damaged systems at once. Watch the September CPC offers, already discounted at $4.60 under Dated Brent, and watch whether anyone picks up Ankara's moratorium idea, now 12 days past Moscow's rejection, with Kyiv silent and Ankara itself yet to answer the rebuff.