I'm John Bats with my colleague Antonio Kullibasano. She is in Bucharest, she is in Bucharest.

She's a senior geopolitical analyst for Geopolitical futures as well as a lecture at the National

School Political and Administrative Studies in Bucharest. And she's written a paper for

the New Strategy Center on the Danube.

As up to date, as Russia being deprived of its membership,

after March 1st of this year,

why is the war?

What is to be done is in front of us. I learned from Antonio that the

Danube is navigable and has been a release valve for the Ukraine grain coming out during harvest season. But at the same time

because of the success of Ukraine using anti-ship missiles and other delivery platforms.

The Russian Black Sea Fleet, which had been blocking Odessa, the port that gets the grain out,

is no longer able to do that because the missiles are so dangerous they've moved to the

other side of the Black Sea and I believe that that has taken some taken the burden

off of the Danube is that correct Antoni? Yes and no and I'll explain why again it

would be nice to have a map also together with the radio interview but that's not quite possible.

However, if you and your listeners look at the map, you will see that

to go to Kost the Danube is still very much used in terms of the

channels connecting the Danube mouth of the Black Sea into the Black Sea with the Daniel Channel

in the Territory of Romania and with Constanza.

So that flow is still very much active as is the flow in the Black Sea proper.

So imagine like two ramifications of the main Black Sea corridor that are working currently.

At the same time, this is being done because the Black Sea on this side of Europe and in Constanza in particular is becoming

...