There is an unwritten code among sailors: don’t talk about politics and religion at sea.
But shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine, Andrian Kudelya, a 35-year-old sailor from Kiev, became clear that it would not be possible to avoid politics. While his pregnant wife and son fled Ukraine, two Russian sailors boarded the ship where Mr Kudelya was working.
On deck, in the control room, in the mess room, the Russian sailors argued with him and other Ukrainian crewmembers, arguing that Ukraine was full of Nazis and that the United States had started the war.
“I can’t hear this lie,” Mr. Kudelya said. But on a ship, he added, “It’s hard to completely avoid contact with these guys.”
Commercial ships have become some of the few places where Russians and Ukrainians, who make up 15 percent of the world’s 1.9 million seafarers, still coexist on routes around the world while their countries are at war. Some ships have become rare havens of understanding and forgiveness. On other ships, the mood has become tense and at times unbearable, upsetting the maritime tradition of sailors considering each other as teammates, regardless of background.
Kudelya said he was relieved to disembark in Germany in April, where he was reunited with his family, and that he will look for jobs with shipping companies that do not employ Russians. “I have to think about my work and not about the conflict and a useless conversation about politics,” he said.
With the global maritime industry already short of commercial sailors, relying mainly on sailors from Russia and Ukraine, who are generally highly skilled, some companies have turned off sailors to cool the tension on board.
AP Moller-Maersk, one of the world’s largest shipping companies, said in a statement that having Russian and Ukrainian crew members on the same ship can be challenging. “As a precautionary measure, we have decided not to have seafarers from Ukraine and Russia on board the same ship,” the company said, adding that this policy had come into effect at the start of the invasion in February.
Another shipping company, based in the Baltic states, required Russian and Ukrainian crew members to sign a form agreeing not to discuss politics on board, said Oleksiy Salenko, a Ukrainian officer who signed the document and told the event by phone.
“That’s the sailor’s law,” Mr. Salenko said. “We are out of politics.” However, a few days later, the Russian captain, who previously served in the Russian army, began to humiliate him, Mr. Salenko said, leaving him insufficient time to complete difficult tasks and tell him he was unfit for the job. Mr. Salenko left the ship shortly afterwards and terminated his contract months early.
Our coverage of the war between Russia and Ukraine
In the midst of the difficult moments, on some ships, the close contact between Russians and Ukrainians has led to unexpected condolences.
Roman Zelenskyi, 24, a sailor from Odessa, Ukraine, said that after he and the other Ukrainians showed the Russians pictures of the damage in the Ukrainian cities of Kharkiv and Mariupol, the four Russians on his ship were shocked and embarrassed. “These are people like me who work on a ship,” he said. “We live in peace.”
On another ship, some Russian sailors said they felt sorry for the fellow crew members over the destruction of their cities. “We understand that it is difficult for him,” Ivan Chukalin, a Russian sailor, said of a Ukrainian sailor on his ship as it sailed to the Netherlands. “His birthplace has been destroyed.” However, Mr. Chukalin insisted that it was better not to take sides. “Politics is an undesirable topic for discussion.”
Another Russian sailor, Edward Viktorovich, 46, who works on a fishing vessel in the Arctic Ocean, said the war had not affected relations between the Russians and the Ukrainians on his ship. “We all cook in the same pot,” he said. “Here we are colleagues. Politics does not affect us.”
Even on ships where sailors made a concerted effort not to talk about the war, the Ukrainian sailors said in interviews that they were haunted by fears for their family and friends in Ukraine.
Dmytro Deineka, 24, a sailor from Kharkiv, said he and the four other Ukrainians on board had tried not to respond to comments from the Russian captain and chief officer on his ship to avoid retaliation. But in the weeks after his grandmother’s house was bombed, he explained his position to the pro-Russian captain of Crimea. The captain reacted aggressively, saying that Ukraine was full of Nazis and needed to be rescued by the Russians.
The Ukrainians on board wrote a letter to the Dutch shipowner requesting that the captain be removed. “The letter contained information about our feelings on board, what the captain said to us, our emotional state and that we cannot work in such conditions,” Mr Deineka said. Within weeks, the company replaced the captain with another Russian captain who sympathized with Ukrainian sailors and the stress they were under because of worrying about their families at home.
Many young Ukrainians from the port cities of Odessa or Mariupol chose sailing because it offered a fixed salary. Now a small percentage of the 45,000 Ukrainians at sea are trying to return to Ukraine to fight, but the majority want to stay on board, said Oleg Grygoriuk, the chairman of Ukraine’s Marine Transport Workers’ Trade Union. He said there had been cases where Ukrainian sailors on ships stopping in Russian ports were taken for questioning and search. More recently, when ships dock in Russian ports, Ukrainian seafarers disembark at nearby ports outside Russia and are picked up after the stop, he said.
Mr Grygoriuk said last month’s rocket attacks in Odessa, which took place less than a day after an agreement was signed to allow the transit of 20 million tons of grain trapped in Ukraine’s blocked Black Sea ports, raised security concerns. of dock workers and sailors, who are paid about double for each day they work in a war zone.
That was a risk some were willing to take, with money tight at home. The sailors at sea are currently the ones who left before the war started and have stayed out of land ever since. Others, who were between contracts when the war broke out and were unable to leave due to government restrictions prohibiting men aged 18 to 60 from leaving the country, said in interviews that their savings were dwindling and they had cut back on their spending on cigarettes and food. .
Vadym Mundriyevskyy, a senior officer for Maersk who was between contracts in Odessa, his hometown, when the Russian invasion began, said the conversation had ended in a group chat on Telegram, with Russian and Ukrainian seafarers he had previously worked with. “There is nothing more to say,” said Mr. Mundriyevskyy, 39. “Otherwise it would become a different place for fights.”
With some Ukrainian sailors unable to work because of the war, shipping companies, already struggling with staff shortages, are barely manning ships, said Natalie Shaw, director of labor affairs at the International Chamber of Shipping. Some shipping companies are not hiring Russian seafarers because of uncertainty about how they would pay them, given Western sanctions. A prolonged inability to get Ukrainian and Russian sailors on ships could further exacerbate tensions in the global shipping industry, she said.
Another factor burdening crews is that some ships have to travel longer distances to avoid waters near war zones, Ms Shaw added.
“What would have been a fairly harmonious situation is becoming a challenge,” Ms Shaw said. “As the war accelerates and people’s families are more affected, the likelihood of interpersonal relationship problems will increase. That is inevitable.”
