The flow of traffic is mostly centred on the northern Baltic route out of Russia and Belarus and it’s a very uneven picture around the east Baltic Sea, explain regional specialists Wolfram Schaefer and Tobias Merten of BMT Transport Solutions.

While Finnish box terminals have been pulled down by Russia’s drop in demand, Baltic ports are generally less affected because container volumes have been relatively low for years and therefore only a small part of the total throughput. Poland on the other hand has proved virtually crunch-proof - cargo through Gydnia and Gdansk is still being steadily drawn in by domestic demand.

Riga and Ventspils are among those bolstered by Russia’s present need to keep pumping out oil, coal and gas exports while Latvian ports in general and others further west gain from landlocked Belarus’ need to share its riches.

Driven by the need for strategic planning, Riga commissioned a study from BMT which may prove to be the closest thing to a crystal ball you can get: this looked at commercial shipping movements and has predicted a big trade bounce in the area – encouraging Riga to keep faith with its expansion plans.

However, a note of caution has been sounded by Dr Schaefer who points out that Russia is steadily expanding ahead of the game - box capacity in St Petersburg, and oil facilities in Primorsk being just two examples. "Given its political hold over its transport, it may be that in four or five years we will begin to see more Russian exports and container imports being directed through Russian ports," he says, "to the exclusion of others."

On the other side of the region, ports in the Black Sea area have had to make do with whatever they can get, and this hasn’t necessarily filled the hole left by boxes. “Ton for ton doesn’t necessarily translate into money for money,” says Andrii Kuzmenko, director of Transinvestservice (TIS) Odessa. He guesses that containers are down around 60% across the board in his area, and adds, “Although recent figures are better than January’s, our total throughput is still 50% down year-on-year.”

Some ports on the Black Sea route seem to have suffered more than others. In particular Constanta in Romania has lost significant amounts of traffic. Mr Merten explains that “the deepwater port and principal transhipment hub in the Black Sea has been particularly hit by the severe downturns in riparian states and the significantly lighter flows".

But because areas with southern coastlines like the Ukraine and swathes of Russia have to rely on routes through the Black Sea, certain ports look like being winners if the market rebounds from a Russian push toward reinvestment.

Some, like Bourgas, may also gain from projects aimed at bypassing Turkish straits and the bottleneck of the Bosphorus. The Bourgas-Alexandroupolis pipeline aims to carry oil out of Russia to Greece – although the project is controversial and Prime Minister Boiko Borissov has called it economically unviable.

While Russia and the Ukraine have both been hit hard by the downturn – Russia losing around 10% of its gross domestic product this year - the region was brimming with opportunity not that long ago, and as Russia stands at the doorway to World Trade Organisation membership, Vladimir Putin has offered a very large carrot by saying he backs further loosening of state holdings.

The up side of the difficult market conditions, according to Alexander Voronkov of Russia’s National Container Company (NCC) is that “these days the shipping lines have an opportunity to pick a terminal that truly suits their operational requirements". NCC has put a lot into service technology – a strategy that has gained them an increasing market share.

Mr Voronkov explains shippers are now looking for technological advantages and flexible commercial policies in their stops. “Terminals which had no such advantages grew faster in the previous years - when most facilities were congested - but today they have lost 60 of their throughput,” he says.

In fact, the economy may not stay down for long. Mr Voronkov says that the recent two months has seen enough positive trends to allow talk about a “stable market recovery".

However, the region is liable to flare-ups which makes everyone nervous. The recent spat between Georgia and Russia seemed worryingly close to a resumption of clashes which only last year erupted into an outright, if short, war.

Commercial operations too are also battling it out with some of the regions’ authorities. In the Ukraine, a number of state versus private investor spats are ongoing. For example, Ukrtranscontainer (UTC) in Illichivsk has had its contract withdrawn and “been kicked out of the port it has just spent $60m modernising,” says Mr Kuzmenko, who adds the authorities are “making life miserable” for the private terminals who operate their facilities within state-owned ports.

Transinvestservice (TIS) itself was attacked earlier this year when the port authority attempted to stop the Zhen Hua 11 docking in a specially built deepwater berth. Mr Kuzmenko said the objections were “spurious” and aimed at disrupting comparisons between private and state facilities – a comparison which would, he says, show up the flaws in the authorities’ budgets.

He adds that recent figures turned in by the government port managers “look strangely bright”, partly because of the effect of a 60% local currency depreciation and increases to port tariffs. Further, he explains, the field is skewed since the state-run companies receive not only money for cargo handling, but also port and cargo dues. “Around 65% of the state facilities’ income comes from private operator’s activity” he says.

Mr Kuzmenko is one among many who feel that the charges should be fed back into the economy to support ports’ growth, saying the state port authorities keep the income while the private terminals are the ones making “huge investments”.

In Russia itself, Oslo Marine Group is involved in a court ruling that could see its Vyborg port operations at the West Terminal forcibly taken back under the control of federal port administrator Rosmorport – due to the claim that its berthing investments are actually illegal under Russian law.

“The nuts and bolts of the Russian system are very hard to get to grips with”, says Simon Whitehead of consultancy firm College Hill Associates. Even before the crash, many big foreign companies suffered reversals in their involvement in the region. “The Kremlin decides who benefits from Russian resources. Investors need to exercise diligence in picking their partners - it is a complex environment and you need people who understand the dynamics.”

Although Russia has lost around 10% of its GDP this year, Mr Whitehead cautions against “underestimating the sheer power of Russian resources – it is, after all, the largest producer of oil in the world and it supplies 25% of Europe’s gas".