Escalating

Russian forces have struck Ukraine’s southern Black Sea port of Odesa, damaging port facilities and a ship, the region’s governor says.

The attack late on Monday followed another at the weekend when Moscow carried out a sustained barrage of drones and missile attacks on the wider area around Odesa, which is home to ports crucial to Ukraine’s overseas trade and fuel imports. They followed Russian threats to cut “Ukraine off from the sea”.

The escalation in Russia’s assault on Odesa, Ukraine’s biggest port city, has unfolded as Washington steps up diplomatic efforts to bring an end to the war. Ukrainian officials met members of a US delegation on Friday in Florida while US envoys held talks with Russian representatives on Saturday.

“The situation in the Odesa region is harsh due to Russian strikes on port infrastructure and logistics,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told reporters in Kyiv on Monday. “Russia is once again trying to restrict Ukraine’s access to the sea and block our coastal regions.”

What happened in the latest Russian attack on Odesa?

On Tuesday, the head of the Odesa Regional Military Administration, Oleh Kiper, said Russian strikes overnight had damaged a civilian cargo vessel and a warehouse in a district of Odesa while the roof of a two-storey residential building had caught fire.

Meanwhile, strikes on Saturday on the port of Pivdennyi near Odesa damaged storage reservoirs, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Oleksii Kuleba said. Those came just one day after a ballistic missile strike, also in Pivdennyi, had killed eight people and wounded at least 30.

These are just the latest strikes in an escalation of hostilities in the area over the past few weeks.

Last week, Russia launched one of its largest aerial assaults of the war on the Black Sea region, damaging energy infrastructure and causing a power outage in Odesa, leaving hundreds of thousands of residents without electricity for several days.

Russia’s Ministry of Defence did not immediately comment on the strikes, but the Kremlin has previously described Ukraine’s economic infrastructure as a “legitimate military objective” during the nearly four-year war.

On the Telegram messaging app, Kuleba said on Friday that Russian forces were targeting power infrastructure and a bridge over the Dniester River near the village of Mayaky, southwest of Pivdennyi, which was struck five times in 24 hours.

That bridge links parts of the region separated by waterways and serves as the primary westbound route to border crossings with Moldova. It is currently out of operation. Kuleba said the route normally carries about 40 percent of Ukraine’s fuel supplies.

Why is Russia targeting Odesa?

“The focus of the war may have shifted towards Odesa,” Kuleba said, warning that the “crazy” attacks could intensify as Russia tries to weaken Ukraine’s economy.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has previously said Moscow wants to restrict Ukraine’s Black Sea access in retaliation for Kyiv’s recent drone attacks on Russia’s sanctions-evading “shadow fleet” of vessels, which carry a variety of commodities.

Ukraine said those vessels are used to illegally export sanctioned oil, which provides Russia with its main source of revenue for financing its full-scale invasion of its neighbour.

How important is the port of Odesa to Ukraine?

Odesa’s port has long been central to Ukraine’s economy. Called a “pearl by the sea”, Odesa is Ukraine’s third most populous city after Kyiv and Kharkiv.

Black Sea ports – including Odesa and two others close by, Pivdennyi and Chornomorsk – and Mykolaiv to the east handled more than 70 percent of Ukraine’s exports before the war.

But Odesa’s role as a trading hub has grown in recent years as ports in the Zaporizhia, Kherson and Mykolaiv regions have been occupied by Russia.

Since the war began in February 2022, Ukraine has continued to rank among the world’s top five exporters of wheat and corn – largely through Odesa.

By targeting Odesa’s shipping facilities with missiles and drones, Ukrainian officials said, Putin aims to destroy Ukrainian trade and business infrastructure.

Zelenskyy, who has previously accused Russia of “sowing chaos” on the people of Odesa, said: “Everyone must see that without pressure on Russia, they have no intention of genuinely ending their aggression.”

What would it mean for Ukraine if Odesa were destroyed?

If the port of Odesa were badly damaged, the economic impact for Ukraine would be severe. The city and its surrounding areas would suffer major job losses in the shipping and logistics industries, seriously squeezing local incomes. Meanwhile, port-dependent businesses would falter and investment would fall away.

Nationally, Ukraine’s export capacity would be hit hard. As a key gateway for grain and other commodities, disruptions there would raise transport costs, slow shipments and reduce export volumes, choking foreign currency earnings and piling pressure on the hryvnia, Ukraine’s currency.

Elsewhere, farmers would suffer from lower prices for their produce as well as storage bottlenecks with knock-on effects across rural economies. The government would also lose customs revenue just as reconstruction costs would rise, weakening the country’s overall economic resilience.

What other acts of maritime warfare have Ukraine and Russia engaged in during the war?

Over the past six months, maritime warfare between Ukraine and Russia has intensified. Both sides have targeted naval and commercial assets across the Black Sea and beyond.

Ukrainian forces have increasingly used underwater drones and unmanned surface vessels to strike ships tied to Russia’s shadow fleet.

Several shadow fleet tankers, including the Kairos and Virat, were hit by Ukrainian naval drones in the Black Sea near Turkish waters in late November.

Kyiv has expanded its reach elsewhere, claiming drone strikes in the Mediterranean on December 19 on the Qendil, a Russian-linked tanker, marking an expansion in Kyiv’s maritime operations.

At the same time, Russian forces have ramped up attacks on commercial targets, including a Turkish-flagged ship carrying trucks and other freight near Odesa with drone attacks on December 13.

These actions reflect a shift towards what is referred to as “asymmetric naval warfare”, in which drones and improvised systems play a growing role in disrupting each side’s economic and military support networks at sea, experts said.

For the first time since the termination of the Cold War, a major military crisis is heating up in the Caribbean. Since early September 2025, United States aerial combat drones have been patrolling and targeting the suspected smuggler boats in the international waters of the Caribbean Sea. These strikes were initially portrayed as kinetic measures to choke off the drug trade through the Caribbean Sea. According to US officials, by 04 December, 22 strikes have been conducted and 87 narco-terrorists have been killed. However, it’s worthy to note that the majority of cocaine production is centered in Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, and Mexico and enters into the United States through an inland or Pacific route—not through the Caribbean Sea. Out of 22 strikes, only 10 have been conducted in the Pacific waters.

Washington’s political ambitions eventually became evident in October once it forward deployed a naval flotilla at the strike range to Venezuela. Currently, eight US Navy vessels are operating in the Caribbean Sea. The USS Gerald Ford aircraft carrier, with its vast combat aviation wing comprising F-35C Lightning IIs, F/A-18 E/F Super Hornets, and a variety of support fixed- and rotary-wing aircraft, is currently stationed in the US Virgin Islands. Other forward-deployed naval vessels include the MV Ocean Trader command vessel and the USS Iwo Jima amphibious assault ship with over 4,000 marines. These ships are supported by two Ticonderoga-class cruisers, two Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, and the USS Newport News, a Los Angeles-class nuclear attack submarine (SSN), each equipped with Tomahawk cruise missiles. The presence of this naval flotilla suggests that the USN has mustered enough capability to not only launch aerial and cruise missile strikes but also conduct amphibious operations at the Venezuelan coast. In parallel, Venezuelan airspace has been declared ‘closed’ by the Trump administration. Such assertive measures are not meant for anti-narcotic operations but perhaps for regime change either through coercive diplomacy or through direct military action. Whatever the case may be, it’s evident that for the first time in decades, the United States is apparently preparing for a direct military conflict in its own hemisphere.

Understanding how this crisis escalated requires looking back at the recent history of bilateral tensions. The fractures began to appear in US-Venezuela relations from 1999, when Hugo Chávez came to rule on a wave of anti-American populism and nationalized the country’s oil industry. Within three years, mutual relations collapsed so abruptly that first Washington imposed sanctions and then briefly removed Chávez from power through a CIA-backed coup. Chávez regained the rule in a matter of a few days. This move, however, further intensified anti-American sentiments in the Venezuelan public. Chávez made subversion of Washington a political identity; his successor Nicolás Maduro turned it into state doctrine. In 2019, Washington even declared Juan Guaidó, the opposition leader of Venezuela, as the country’s ‘legitimate president.’ Besides the open political signaling of the White House, the CIA also attempted another coup to topple the Maduro regime but again failed to achieve the requisite results.

Maduro successfully exploited continuous intervention by the United States to augment its political narrative at the public level and managed to earn a third consecutive term in 2025. However, the results of elections were regarded as dubious and were generally dismissed as fraudulent, further degrading relations with the West.

For Venezuela, oil has attracted more trouble than prosperity. The country has more than 300 billion barrels of proven oil reserves—more than Saudi Arabia (267 billion barrels)—yet it produces less than 10 percent of its 1990s highest productivity rate. The Venezuelan crude oil is ultra-heavy (8-12° API) and has very high sulfur content. Such dense oil is not only very challenging to refine—both economically and technologically—but also very hard to transfer and cannot be pumped through pipelines without imported diluents. In a nutshell, despite possessing the largest proven oil reserves, Venezuela cannot refine and export its black gold without significant foreign assistance. The current oil infrastructure, developed during the Cold War, is gradually crumbling. Pipelines are either blocked or leaking, and refineries are now operating below 15 percent capacity. Approximately 58 billion USD worth of investment is required to repair and revive the current infrastructure. Being a struggling economy, Venezuela simply does not have the financial capacity to do so. Meanwhile, the majority of technical expertise has been eroded due to brain drain. For example, PDVSA once employed more than 40,000 engineers but now has a total strength of only 12,000 with a large portion of untrained manpower. Currently, while Gulf nations are earning huge revenue from oil exports, Venezuela stands isolated as an oil superpower that cannot even power itself.

The aforementioned factors have imparted grave consequences on the Venezuelan economy. Its national GDP has shrunk from about 300 billion USD to a mere 110 billion USD approximately. More than half of the population is living in poverty, and unemployment has crippled public development. Roughly 28 percent of the total population is in need of humanitarian assistance. These financial woes have compelled common Venezuelan citizens to seek refuge outside the country. Currently, nearly 8 million locals have left the country and are living as refugees in neighboring countries, including Columbia, Peru, Brazil, and even the United States.

To survive internal implosion, Caracas has sought external assistance from Washington’s strategic competitors, including Russia, China, and even Iran. Both Russia and Venezuela are signatories of the 10-year Strategic Partnership Treaty, which was ratified in Oct-Nov 2025 with the overarching objective of combating unilateral coercive measures. Russia has provided military assistance and technical support for the training of troops and maintenance of military equipment, which is predominantly of Soviet origin. China has repeatedly provided diplomatic support and financial loans to support Venezuela’s energy infrastructure. Both Russia and China have vetoed resolutions at the UN Security Council for imposing stringent sanctions against Venezuela. With Iran, Venezuela also shares a strong relation, which was formalized by a 20-year agreement in 2022. Their domains of cooperation include trade, repairing of energy infrastructure, modernization of the defense force, and technology sharing for refinement of crude oil. For the United States, these collaborations are meant to develop a foothold in Latin America by Russia, China, and Iran—something Washington considers intolerable.

When the Trump administration returned in 2025, within weeks, it scrapped Chevron’s license, eliminating Venezuela’s last stable revenue stream. The most significant escalation came on July 25, 2025, when the US Treasury designated Venezuela’s military leadership—the Cartel de los Soles—as a global terrorist organization. No foreign military in American history had ever received such a label. Simultaneously, the reward for the arrest of President Nicolás Maduro has been doubled to 50 million USD by the Trump administration on federal charges of narcoterrorism and conspiracy to import cocaine. And now, with a fully equipped US naval strike force sailing in the Caribbean Sea, the situation is getting increasingly volatile. The Venezuelan military simply does not possess the capability to defend against such a strike force.

If hostilities break out, then instead of placing boots on the ground, the United States is likely to conduct targeted strikes at key assets, impose and sustain a naval blockade, and eventually undermine the Venezuelan military’s and nation’s loyalty to Maduro through coercive diplomacy. The current crisis illustrates that although the Trump administration claims to have taken numerous initiatives to end conflicts and promote trade & collaboration in the Eastern Hemisphere, it will show little to no tolerance for the growing influence of Moscow and Beijing in the Western Hemisphere. Under the Monroe Doctrine, the United States seeks to sustain its control in the Western Hemisphere, including Latin America. For Trump, an example can be crafted out of Venezuela to demonstrate the potential consequences of deepening collaboration with Moscow and Beijing in Washington’s backyard.