On July 23, 2026, Maersk announced the suspension of its container shipping service to the fishing port of Chornomorsk near Odesa, Ukraine. The reason is not complicated — Russia has recently intensified its strikes on Ukraine's Black Sea ports; multiple shipowners and insurers have raised their risk assessments; freight costs have climbed and capacity has tightened, and Ukraine's grain exports have been hit in the process.
The decision itself is a piece of business news. The reaction it provoked is the scene truly worth watching.
Two Scripts for the Same War
Ukraine's reaction was swift: it formally requested an emergency session of the United Nations Security Council to condemn Russia for intensifying its attacks on Black Sea ports and vessels. The justification sounds perfectly reasonable — "economic terrorism," "hijacking global food security."
Yet in a Weibo post on the same day, the commentator Baorong Wanwu Hengheshui pointed to a contradiction that cannot be dodged: Ukraine (and the Western media that back it) routinely and high-profilely celebrate and circulate videos of "Ukrainian drones/missiles striking Russia's Black Sea Fleet / tankers / civilian vessels," declaring this to be "legitimate self-defense" and "severing the supply chain of Russia's war machine." But the moment Russia returns the favor by intensifying its strikes on Ukraine's Black Sea ports and cargo ships, the framing escalates at once — all the way to a demand for an emergency UN Security Council session.
This is not an incidental contradiction but a structural double standard — the same act, when committed by oneself, is "legitimate self-defense"; when committed by the other side, it is "economic terrorism." The justice narratives of war are often built on the assumption that "the other side will not hit back." The moment the other side opts for reciprocal retaliation, cracks appear in that narrative.
Ukraine depends on the Black Sea corridor to export grain. Russia depends just as much on the Black Sea to export oil and cargo. Both sides are exploiting the other's shipping vulnerability as a lever of war; the only differences are who struck first — and who controls the power of definition on the international stage of public opinion.
The Essential Logic of War
Baorong Wanwu Hengheshui's analysis cuts to a more fundamental question — what regularities does war display once it enters the phase of mutual harm? His verdict is blunt: "This is no lofty moral dispute. It is the classic logic of war: you hit me, I hit you back, and whoever is stronger gets the upper hand."
What makes this verdict incisive is not that it reveals some fresh truth, but that it points to a recurring blind spot in war narratives: once one side has the capacity for "reciprocal retaliation" and chooses to use it, the victim's narrative loses its unilateral moral high ground. The side that spends every day flaunting "short videos of hitting Russian ships" on social media suddenly discovers that Russia, too, is willing to strike ports head-on — and suffers a collapse of composure. But the collapse itself proves nothing about the other side's "evil"; it only shows that one has not yet made peace with paying the full cost of war.
"Once a war has reached this stage, neither side should pretend to be a saint. If you truly want to end this cycle, you have to negotiate — and actually reach a deal — instead of rolling your eyes the moment your throat is grabbed and boasting the moment the grip loosens."
Who Bears the Spillover Costs of War
The mutual harm in Black Sea shipping is not a zero-sum game. Rising freight costs, tightened capacity, obstructed grain exports — these bills ultimately land on third parties. Europe is the principal buyer of Russian natural gas; Africa is a major importer of Ukrainian grain. In this cycle of "you strike my port, I strike your tanker," both sides absorb each other's blows, while outsiders absorb the spillover: inflation and shortages.
On the very same issue, both sides play perpetrator and victim at the same time. This is precisely a defining feature of a war that has entered its attrition phase — both sides are bleeding, yet neither can bear the political cost of stopping first, and so mutual harm hardens into the equilibrium.