War in Ukraine may lead to seafarer shortage and impact on supply chains

War in Ukraine may lead to seafarer shortage and impact on supply chains
Emily JB Smith 25 June 2022 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-06-25/ukraine-russia-war-impact-on-seaf...

Horror arrived at Andrey Marsov's apartment window only weeks after he moved in.

He ate breakfast, admiring the view of the city, fields and airport below, when rockets flew past.

"I just couldn't believe my eyes," he said.

"One, two, three [of them]. It was a shock. I was like, 'How is this possible?'"

He started to resent the vantage point and the terrifying front-row seat it gave him to attacks on Odessa, in Ukraine's south.

He longed for his calm, ordered life on the ocean, working a job that took him all over the world, including Bunbury in regional Western Australia.

But like thousands of Ukrainian seafarers, he is stuck on shore for now.

'This could impact supply lines'

Ukraine is the world's sixth biggest seafaring nation, accounting for 4 per cent of the global workforce, according to 2021 data from the United Nations.

Russia is the second biggest, behind the Philippines, and together Russians and Ukrainians make up 15 per cent of the world's seafarers.

But Ukrainian male seafarers between 18 and 60 years old who, like Mr Marsov, were at home when Russia invaded, cannot leave due to conscription laws.

International Chamber of Shipping director of employment affairs, Natalie Shaw, said it had now become more difficult to hire Ukrainian and Russian seafarers and that was taking a toll on a workforce that was already stretched due to COVID.

She said officers — who were higher in rank and had more training — were in particularly short supply.

"We are beginning to see a massive gap in well-trained and experienced seafarers, and this may begin to impact supply lines, as upskilling is not a quick fix," she said.

"It's highly challenging to hire either nationality at the moment which removes a significant chunk of officers from the workforce."

But Shipping Australia policy and communications manager Jim Wilson said none of its members had yet reported a worker shortage due to the conflict and he believed if Australian trade were to be impacted it would have happened already.

He said 9 per cent of seafarers were staying onboard longer than their original contract at the height of the COVID pandemic but that figure recently sat at 4.5 per cent.

He said that indicated "fears of a re-escalation of a crew-change crisis" due to the war had not been realised.

Former ship captain Kaushal Rohilla, who runs an advocacy organisation called Seafarers Anchor, said his most pressing concern was humanitarian.

He said seafarers had been stranded on ships that could not secure safe passage from conflict areas, others were unable to get information from loved ones and many more were struggling to come to terms with the second major crisis, after COVID, to hit their industry.

He said seafarers' mental health was impacted during COVID "but nobody cared".

"The thing is, these are the people who keep the supply chains running," he said.

"There should be unified support [for them]."

Lessons from COVID

Mission to Seafarers Australia and PNG regional director Garry Dodd said the recent COVID experience better prepared his organisation to support Ukrainian seafarers.

Mr Dodd said it now allowed chaplains to speak with seafarers who got in touch over the internet.

Ukrainians and Russians often work on ships together but Mr Dodd said he had not heard of any tensions because of the war.

"When you're in a vessel with 21 other people … you are family," he said.

"I often have Ukrainian and Russian crews together. And they say to me, 'Look, it's not our fault. We didn't start this fight'."

But he said the conversations they were having with Ukrainian seafarers could be harrowing — with one saying, for example, that they had been unable to reconnect with family after hearing a bomb go off and the line going dead while on the phone to them.

"Hearing a seafarer, Ukrainian, in broken English, crying his heart out, just talking about the unknown, is really quite shattering," Mr Dodd said.

Mood shifts onboard

Andrii Sierikov understands that uncertainty.

The 27-year-old Ukrainian seafarer, who received his COVID booster at Port Kembla in NSW, was on a ship working the Japan-United States line when the war broke out on February 24.

He said he was taken by complete surprise when his dad called with the news.

He said the mood onboard shifted since then.

"It's not like stress — it's the constant feeling of something going on," he said.

"I'm tracking the news every day, I'm talking to my family every day, whenever it's possible for them."

But he said he and other Ukrainian seafarers were buoyed by their interactions with the international community when their ship was in port as people asked how their families were going and wished them all the best.

"I'm very happy because people are so much aware of what's going on," he said.

"And I want to say thank you for all that."

Mr Sierikov will remain onboard for the foreseeable future because, he said, it was better for him to keep working and paying tax than return to Ukraine, where he would be forced to stay.

Concerns for family

Ukrainian seafarer Kateryna Volovyk, 25, is also keeping clear of her homeland.

She said she could come and go from Ukraine if she wanted but deemed it too risky for now.

Instead, she is spending the three months before her next contract begins working part time at a shipyard in the Latvian capital of Riga.

But she worries about her family, particularly her mother, who she is trying to convince to move to Poland.

"She's already in a different psychological state," she said.

"So it's for me to calm her down and to tell her we should be optimistic and the decision needs to [be to] leave for the time being because it's not really safe and something can happen."

While she understood why men were not allowed to leave, she said it created a tough situation for seafarers trapped in the country who could not earn an income.

'I miss the calm sea'

Mr Marsov said he did not take up arms and fight, saying that was not in his nature.

Instead, he found work in a surprising place — as a videographer working on fashion shoots for clothing companies.

"Even in war, business opens," he said.

But he said other seafarers stranded in Ukraine since Russia invaded had failed to secure work and had started petitioning the government requesting permission to return to the sea.

Despite the difficult circumstances, he said he still preferred to be in Ukraine than elsewhere, so he could be near his family and make sure they were OK.

But he said there were times when he longed for the peace of the ocean.

"I don't usually miss the sea because here is my family," he said.

"But when the war starts, I just thought how calm and easy it was at sea.

"My first thought was, 'Oh I miss the ship. I miss the calm sea'."