Ukraine has completed two trial runs of a ferry link with Georgia, the operator said on Thursday, crossing the Black Sea that has been a major battleground in the war with Russia.

Kyiv’s forces have sunk several Russian ships in the Black Sea since 2022 while Russia has heavily targeted Ukraine’s port infrastructure with long-range missile and drone attacks.

“Two trips have been made, they are trial runs,” the commercial director of UkrFerry Volodymyr Chernievsky told AFP.

The vessels crossed from Chornomorsk in the Odesa region to the Georgian port city of Batumi on March 18 and 26, the Interfax-Ukraine news agency reported, citing a Ukrainian Railways official.

“This is not a regular ferry service yet, it is only trial runs for now in order to identify all the problem areas, to understand how it can be resumed, when and under what conditions,” Chernievsky added.

Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine halted all civilian shipping from Ukraine’s Black Sea ports.

Turkey and the United Nations then brokered a deal between Moscow and Kyiv to allow cargo ships to sail safely from Ukraine’s southern ports, but Russia walked away from the deal after a year.

Chernievsky said a possible ceasefire in the Black Sea — being pushed by Kyiv and Washington — could be a “positive moment” to resume the ferry connection to Georgia, which sits on the southeastern edge of the Sea, just below Russia.

Last month Ukraine reported a Russian ballistic missile attack had killed four Syrian civilian sailors and damaged a cargo ship at the port of Odesa.