The blockade at the border with Poland has crippled Ukraine’s land trade. But a new Black Sea route is providing an economic lifeline.

For weeks, a border blockade by Polish truckers has severely hampered Ukraine’s overland trade, preventing the war-torn country from exporting tons of grain, delaying the delivery of vital military equipment and squeezing the country’s already meager revenues.

But an economic lifeline has emerged from what was long viewed as a high-risk trade route: the Black Sea.

Ukraine’s government said on Tuesday that more than 10 million tons of cargo had already been exported through a shipping corridor recently established by Ukraine to evade Russia’s effective blockade of its Black Sea ports. Half of these exports are agricultural products, Oleksandr Kubrakov, Ukraine’s infrastructure minister, said in a statement.