As record number of seafarers and cargo ships are abandoned in war zones, crew members stranded in a Black Sea port have shared their dramatic testimony with the Guardian

On the night of 16 July last year, Gaurav Joshi, one of the crew working on a cargo ship stranded at a port in southern Ukraine, was on patrol. The crew of the MT Nathan had found themselves abandoned in a war zone for the past three months after a dispute between the ship’s owners.

It had been a rough few months for Joshi and the 14 other crew, who came from India, Egypt and Turkey. They often spent sleepless nights listening to the distant sounds of explosions caused by Russian bombing and the Ukrainian air defence. “Some nights we could even see the lights and fire in the sky,” says Joshi.