A small canal at the mouth of the Danube river has become a geopolitical flashpoint between Ukraine and Romania, sparking fears of Russian meddling and dwindling support in Bucharest for its war-torn neighbour.
The dispute erupted when Kyiv said last month that it had dredged the Bystre canal — a Ukrainian waterway about 10 kilometres long that connects the Black Sea with the Danube’s Chilia branch, which forms a natural border between the two countries.
The increase in Bystre’s navigable depth from 3.9 metres to 6.5 metres was its “first since independence” from the Soviet Union in 1989, Ukraine’s infrastructure ministry said, adding: “We keep on developing the Danube port cluster.”
Expansion of the Danube Delta’s shipping channels is crucial to Kyiv’s plans to develop alternative export routes after Russia blockaded Ukraine’s Black Sea ports following its full-scale invasion a year ago. While a UN-backed grain deal to reopen three ports last year was a lifeline for Ukraine’s war-battered economy and boosted global food supplies, Kyiv is determined to secure viable routes that offer more protection from Russian aggression.
It argues that the deepening of the canal is part of an earlier EU-sponsored Solidarity Lanes programme to facilitate Ukraine’s trade with the bloc. But the announcement sparked a backlash in Romania, where officials have claimed that the dredging threatens the Danube Delta, a world-protected natural reserve known for its biodiversity and abundant birdlife.
Romania’s foreign ministry summoned the Ukrainian ambassador and demanded that its neighbour halt “all dredging works” if the purpose went beyond regular maintenance of the waterway. Bucharest also requested that it carry out its own measurements of the Chilia branch and the Bystre canal.
With the spat threatening to damage bilateral ties, Ukraine’s embassy has appealed to Romanians to “not play along with Russian propaganda” that aims to undermine their support for Kyiv as the war drags on.
Ukraine’s embassy in Bucharest quickly sought to clarify that the works were of an “operational nature” to remove silt that had reduced the depth of the waterway. But the topic has become highly politicised in Romania, an EU and Nato member state that has strongly supported Ukraine since Russia’s invasion, including by hosting thousands of refugees.
Klaus Iohannis, Romania’s president, deplored “inflammatory speeches” and urged fellow citizens to first let experts establish “what is really happening there”.
“I do not think it is appropriate to attack the Ukrainians based on uncertain data,” Iohannis said during a meeting with US president Joe Biden and fellow regional leaders in Warsaw last month. “They don’t need to be scolded, they need support.”
The same week a far-right Romanian lawmaker, George Simion, posted a video from a boat on what he said was the Bystre canal. In the video Simion criticised political opponents for not caring about the Danube Delta.
Ukraine has approved the request from Romania to carry out its own hydrographic measurements on the Bystre canal and Chilia branch to clarify “conflicting information”, said Romania’s transport ministry. The measurements are earmarked to begin on March 15.
On Tuesday, talks mediated by the European Commission were held in Izmail, a Ukrainian port town on the Danube about 60km west of the Bystre canal.
“We [will] do common measurements to clarify everything to avoid any politicisation,” Dmytro Barinov, deputy head of the Ukrainian Sea Port Authority, said after the talks. He said Ukrainian Naval Forces, which will oversee security, still needed to give their approval. “We will speed up the process as much as possible.”
For Gabriel Paun, president of the Romanian environmental group Agent Green, the public discourse so far has been saturated with “too much politics and too little science”.
“I know that Romania and Ukraine should have consensus before any work should be carried out in any corner of the Delta,” he said. “The consensus must prioritise ecosystem conservation before economic gains.”
Adina Vălean, a Romanian politician who is the EU’s transport commissioner, said the commission had asked both countries to show “full transparency” and resolve their differences.
Contrary to Ukraine’s statement, she said the Bystre canal was not part of the Solidarity Lanes programme, which includes several Danube ports in both countries and had allowed for the export of 51mn tonnes of goods from Ukraine from the programme’s launch in May to the beginning of February.
“The Danubian corridor is very important,” Vălean told the Financial Times, adding that more funding would be made available for Romania to improve navigability and boost export volumes via its own canal, Sulina, which runs along another branch of the Danube Delta and is the main waterway for cargo ships connecting to the Black Sea.
Adrian Stănică, a researcher at the National Institute for Marine Geology in Bucharest, points out that it would be costly for Kyiv to develop and maintain the Bystre-Chilia route. But he said regular maintenance works had negligible effects on the biosphere.
With bilateral ties at stake, he added that in Romania discourse on the matter had become “intoxicated” by fake news and possibly fuelled by a third country, without naming Russia.
Costin Ciobanu, a Romanian political scientist at the Royal Holloway University of London, said that only the facts would enable an “informed discussion about what the Ukrainians did and whether their works on the Bystre canal were a threat to the Danube Delta”.
“Romania’s key interest is that Ukraine wins this war, and should not let episodes like this cast a doubt.”
