Drone strikes on 12–13 August brought all three of Novorossiysk's grain terminals to a stop. Around 25 mln tonnes of grain a year were exported through them. SovEcon puts August wheat exports at 2.2 mln tonnes — half of August 2023's 4.5 mln, and the lowest for the month in 16 years. Only August 2010 was lower, when a drought led the government to ban grain exports altogether.
Why this matters for the railway
Grain is contributing more than any other cargo to RZD rail loading, our rail freight indicator.
Over the first seven months of 2026 loading came to 641.1 mln tonnes, 0.8% below last year. Grain accounts for 17.8 mln tonnes of that, and it is up 53.3% year on year — an increase of 6.19 mln tonnes in physical terms. Coal, the network's largest cargo at 193.2 mln tonnes, added 4.90 mln.
The arithmetic is simple. The network lost 5.2 mln tonnes over seven months. Without grain's growth it would have lost 11.4 mln — a decline of 1.8% rather than 0.8%. Grain alone holds the difference between those two numbers.
The common claim that grain is “the only positive component” does not survive contact with the report: three of the twelve categories posted gains (coal +2.6%, non-ferrous ore +5.2%, grain +53.3%), and the report says something else again about July:
“Coal is, as usual, the main driver of loading growth — it added 1.9 mln t; grain is in second place (+0.5 mln t).”
What this means on our scale
Care is needed here, because the temptation to say “the decline will double” is strong and it would be false.
Our indicator measures the level against 2021, not the rate against last year. Loading currently stands at 86.6% of the pre-war level, the registered trouble line is 80%, and the indicator scores 33 out of 100 — it has already covered two thirds of the distance to that line. If grain's growth vanished entirely, the level would fall to roughly 85.8% and the score to 29. Grain accounts for about 4 points out of 33, and the level remains 6.6 percentage points above the line.
Why does the decline not double on our scale? The year-on-year decline would indeed more than double — from 0.8% to 1.8% — because last year's base is low. A level measured against 2021 does not behave that way — which is precisely why we measure the level. The rest of the indicators are on the monitor and on the data page.
The duty was raised by a formula, not by a ministry
From 26 August to 1 September the wheat export duty will be 1,012.1 roubles a tonne, maize 607.3, and barley stays at zero.
It reads easily as a squeeze on exporters, but the mechanism is different. The duty floats and is recalculated weekly by formula from an indicative price, which this time came to 229.5 dollars a tonne. The duty rose because the calculated price rose, not because anyone decided anything. For our model it is not an event.
What we do not know
The main thing: Russia has not published grain or oil export statistics since 2022. The export volumes in this story are estimates from vessel tracking and industry analysis; there is no state document to check them against, and we say so plainly. Sources put the three terminals' capacity at anywhere from 25 to 26 mln tonnes a year.
We do not know when the terminals will restart, or how much of August's shipments will simply move into September. Nor do we know whether the grain will leave through other ports instead. RZD publishes August loading in mid-September; until then any estimate of the effect is arithmetic, not measurement.