A city famed for storytelling tells a new tale of resilience
Save time by listening to our audio articles as you multitaskThe actual fighting has moved to Mykolaiv, some 130km away. Russian shelling left that city’s residents without water, so Odessans are sending them bottled water and food. In Odessa the main threat now comes from the occasional Russian missile. Even when air-raid sirens wail, people carry on with their lives.
Odessa, a cosmopolitan port city of traders, adventurers, writers, gangsters and romantics, of multiple ethnicities, languages and cultures, is known for storytelling. And the story it tells today is of life winning over war. Odessans are proud that the most popular meme of this war was coined off their coast, on Snake Island, where Ukrainian border guards told a Russian warship “Go fuck yourself.” They are even prouder that on April 14th their army sank the, Russia’s Black Sea flagship.
Russia still yearns to conquer Odessa, once a jewel of the Russian empire. But according to Gennadiy Trukhanov, the city’s mayor, they want it “intact and beautiful”, so they are unlikely to bomb its historic centre. Their plan is to cut it off from the rest of Ukraine by advancing from Mykolaiv to Transnistria, a pro-Russian separatist region ofRussia once hoped Odessa would greet its soldiers with flowers, counting perhaps on Mr Trukhanov’s many ties to Russia.
Where Russia hoped Odessa might be a weak link in Ukraine’s defence, it has proved a bastion, an emblem of a nation that draws its strength from diversity, free enterprise and freedom. While soldiers dig trenches and fortify defences, the city is stockpiling enough food, water and medicine for two months. Mr Trukhanov is asking the army to de-mine some of the beaches so that people can swim in the summer.
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