There are unwritten rules among sailors. Do not discuss politics or religion at sea.
But shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine, it became clear to Andrian Kuderiya, a 35-year-old sailor from Kyiv, that avoiding politics was impossible. When his pregnant wife and son were fleeing Ukraine, two Russian sailors boarded the ship Kuderiya was working on.
On deck, in the control room, and in the mess hall, Russian sailors engaged him and other Ukrainian crew members in a debate, claiming that Ukraine was filled with Nazis and that the United States had started the war.
“I can’t hear this lie,” said Mr. Kuderiya. But on board, “it’s hard to completely avoid contact with them,” he added.
Merchant ships are one of the few places where Russians and Ukrainians, who make up 15% of the world’s 1.9 million seafarers, still live side by side on the world’s sea lanes during the war. Some ships have become rare havens of understanding and forgiveness. On other ships, the mood became tense and sometimes intolerable, upending the maritime tradition of sailors seeing each other as teammates, regardless of background.
Kudelya said he was relieved to be reunited with his family after disembarking in Germany in April and said he would look for a job with a shipping company that does not employ Russians. “You need to think about your work, not about futile conversations about conflict and politics,” he said.
With the global maritime industry already short of civilian seafarers and particularly dependent on highly skilled Russian and Ukrainian seafarers, some companies have switched seafarers to ease tensions on board. .
AP Moller-Maersk, one of the world’s largest shipping companies, said in a statement that it can be difficult to have Russian and Ukrainian crew members on the same ship. “As a precautionary measure, we have decided not to carry seafarers from Ukraine and Russia on the same ship,” the company said, adding that the policy went into effect at the start of the invasion in February.
Another Baltic-based shipping company has asked Russian and Ukrainian crew members to sign a form agreeing not to discuss politics on board, it said, signing a document and telling the episode by phone. According to Ukrainian Oleksiy Salenko.
“That’s the seafarer’s law,” said Salenko. “We are out of politics.” But after a few days, a Russian captain who had previously served in the Russian army began insulting him, Salenko said. Mr. Salenko left the ship shortly thereafter, prematurely ending his contract month.
Coverage of the Russian-Ukrainian War
In a difficult situation, close contacts between Russians and Ukrainians lead to unexpected sympathy on some ships.
Sailor Roman Zelensky, 24, from Odesa, Ukraine, was on his ship after he and other Ukrainians showed Russians pictures of the damage in the Ukrainian cities of Kharkov and Mariupol. One Russian said he was shocked and embarrassed. “These are people like me who work on ships,” he said. “We live in peace.”
On another ship, some Russian sailors said they sympathized with their fellow crew members about the destruction of the city. “I know it’s hard for him,” he said of the crew member. “His homeland was destroyed.” “Politics is an undesirable topic for discussion.”
Another Russian sailor, Edward Viktorovich, 46, who works on an Arctic fishing vessel, said the war had not affected relations between the Russians and the Ukrainians on his ship. rice field. “We all cook in the same pot,” he said. “Here we are colleagues. Politics does not affect us.”
Even on ships where sailors coordinated to avoid talking about war, Ukrainian sailors said in interviews that they were haunted by fears about family and friends in Ukraine.
Dmitro Deyneka, 24, a sailor from Kharkiv, said he and four other Ukrainians on board did not respond to comments made by the ship’s Russian captain and chief mate to avoid retaliation. But weeks after his grandmother’s house was bombed, he confided his views to a pro-Russian captain from Crimea. The captain responded positively, saying that Ukraine was full of Nazis and needed to be saved by the Russians.
A Ukrainian on board wrote a letter to the Dutch owner asking for the captain’s dismissal. “The letter contained information about how we were feeling on board, what the captain had told us, our emotional state, and how we were unable to work in those conditions.” Deineka said, within weeks, the company replaced the captain with another Russian captain. The Russian captain sympathized with the Ukrainian sailors and the stress they were under due to worrying about their families at home.
Many young Ukrainians from the Ukrainian port cities of Odessa and Mariupol chose sailing because it offered a stable salary. Of the 45,000 Ukrainians currently at sea, only a small percentage want to return to Ukraine to fight, but the majority want to stay on board, said Oleg of the Ukrainian Shipping Workers’ Union. Grigoryuk said he said there had been instances of Ukrainian sailors on ships docked at Russian ports being taken for questioning and searching. These days, when a ship docks at a Russian port, Ukrainian sailors disembark at a nearby port outside Russia and pick it up after the stop, he said.
Grigoryuk said the missile strikes in Odessa last month came less than a day after a deal was signed to secure shipments of 20 million tons of grain that were stuck in Ukraine’s blockaded Black Sea ports. The safety of dockworkers and seafarers working in war zones get about double their wages every day.
Some were prepared to take risks as domestic funds were tight. Sailors currently at sea are those who left the country before the outbreak of war and remain abroad. Halfway through the contract when the war began, others, who were unable to leave the country due to government regulations prohibiting men aged 18-60 from leaving the country, said in interviews that their savings had dwindled and He said he cut his spending on cigarettes and food. .
Maersk chief Vadim Mundrievsky, who was in the middle of a contract in his hometown of Odesa when the Russian invasion began, told a Telegram group that included Russian and Ukrainian sailors he had previously worked with. He said the chat conversation had stopped. “I have nothing more to say,” said Mundryevsky, 39.
Natalie Shaw, director of employment affairs at the International Chamber of Shipping, said some Ukrainian seafarers are unable to work because of the war, so shipping companies already grappling with staff shortages are barely managing their seafarers. said only. Some shipping companies are not hiring Russian seafarers because of the uncertainty of how they will be paid due to Western sanctions. Prolonged inability to allow Ukrainian and Russian seafarers to board ships could further exacerbate tensions in the global shipping industry, she said.
Another factor straining crews is that some ships have to travel longer distances to avoid waters close to conflict zones, Shaw added.
“It’s going to be difficult to have a reasonably harmonious situation,” Shaw said. “The more intense the war and the greater the impact it has on families, the more likely it is that there will be problems in relationships.
