Black Sea Tale: Odessans Grapple With Defenses and a Profound Sense of Betrayal

ODESSA, Ukraine — Odessa lies at the edge of the Black Sea. The port city benefits from balmy climes and access to the Mediterranean, earning the nickname “Pearl of the Black Sea.” The vital trade hub flourished under both the tsars and Soviet rule.Today’s Odessans have transformed their city into a fortress reminiscent of the city’s preparations in the face of the 1941 Nazi German onslaught during World War II. Steel tank traps, fighting positions, and layers of concertina wire ring the city center, giving Ukrainian soldiers a defense-in-depth to defend Odessa’s cultural monuments and historic buildings.In the city center, a statue of the Duke of Richelieu, a French governor of Odessa in the 19th century, is encased in a protective layer of sandbags — while a nearby statue of Russia’s Catherine the Great is conspicuously unprotected.The city’s diverse milieu built it into what it is today, reflected in both the Odessan dialect’s Greek, Italian, French, Ukrainian, and Yiddish influences and its Franco-Italian architecture.One concrete fortification sports the French national motto — liberté, égalité, fraternité — in blue and gold, the Ukrainian national colors. Odessa and its environs are Russophone, however, a testament to the city’s history as a center of trade and a cultural melting pot under the tsars, with Russian as a port city’s lingua franca.Beneath the city’s sandbagged, wartime façade, Odessans grapple with wartime privations — and a deep sense of betrayal. Odessa holds an important strategic significance. An estimated 80 percent of the country’s grain exports flow into the city, Ukraine’s largest port, for onward transport around the globe.After Russian-occupied Crimea, Ukraine’s “Southern Capital” is the most important Black Sea prize. Yet today, the city’s exports have ground to a halt. Parts of the port city feel abandoned.One-third to a half of Odessans have left the city for other locales, an estimate reflected in many boarded-up shops and city authorities’ calculations.Russian warships ply the waters off the Odessan coast, blockading the city. They are relatively safe from positions just beyond the horizon, though entering the port is a non-starter: the Ukrainians mined the waters surrounding the port, denying the Russian ships a haven.While mining by harbor authorities and the Ukrainian Navy have helped protect the city from a Russian amphibious assault, it has also strangled businesses that rely on incoming and outgoing cargo ships.The chairman of an import-export business based in Odessa, Yevgen Lemberg, explains what effect the blockade has had on the “upper middle-sized company” he and his partners built out of the ashes of the Soviet collapse.“Without hard currency, the company can’t pay for non-credit imports,” Mr. Lemberg said, and without a functioning port, the company is attempting a transition to overland delivery through Poland via truck.In a stroke of foresight, the company earlier this year invested in bulk storage in western Ukraine, far away from expected battle lines, anticipating a renewed Russian offensive.Despite the investment, they’ve written off significant assets, including several “delivery trucks and warehouses” full of goods. Management has taken a pay cut. Consequently, Mr. Lemberg hasn’t laid off any employees, saying that “without employees, there is no company.”He added that the company has months of pay in reserve, but its planning window has shrunk from years to just “one day” because of the chaotic situation.The company has thrown open its storeroom doors to those in need. Near Kharkiv, behind Russian lines in Ukraine’s east, the company passed out thousands of pounds of pet food, refusing payment.Instead, customers can “take what they need now and pay after the war,” Mr. Lemberg said. “If we [Ukrainians] win, if there’s peace, we’ll see” about repayment.Odessa’s regional air defenses pick up occasional missiles fired by Russian warships over their airspace, interrupting city residents’ comings and goings. Odessa, though, has so far been fortunate to escape the wholesale destruction witnessed in Ukraine’s east.Along with several missile strikes on Odessa’s outskirts, other Russian objects are flying overhead through Odessan airspace. From his apartment window, Anatoly Mishchuk, a 27-year-old ship navigator, could see Ukrainian anti-aircraft fire shoot down a Russian drone the size of a small airplane and has the video to prove it.Although he shot the clip sometime last week, Mr. Mishchuk struggled at first to remember when exactly, explaining that Ukrainians calculate the date now by how many days it has been since the renewed Russian offensive. “There was your life before February 24th,” he explained, “and your life after.”Mr. Mishchuk has a positive outlook for life after this war, though the past month’s events rattle some Odessans to the core. A 30-year-old Odessan concert pianist and IT engineer, Anna Stoyanova, speaks Russian at home with her Bulgarian father and Russian mother. This war has been particularly difficult for her parents, she explains.Her father, Dmytro, was born in 1939 in Bulgaria. As a young child, he hid during air raids in underground shelters and grew up regarding the Red Army as a liberating force that saved him and his family.His shock at Russia’s renewed offensive manifested itself in him physically: shortly after the Russian offensive, he completely lost his eyesight. Mr. Stoianov’s vision has slowly returned, and his daughter blames stress and lack of sleep as well as a deep sense of shock and betrayal for his temporary blindness.Although the Stoianovs speak Russian at home, “we are Ukrainian,” Ms. Stoianova said, echoing a sentiment voiced by many locals. “Odessa is a Ukrainian city, and it will be in the future.”

Black Sea Tale: Odessans Grapple With Defenses and a Profound Sense of Betrayal

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