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The echo of a loud explosion shakes Odessa during the early morning. The sirens of the fire brigade and ambulances do not take long to be heard right after. Russia has just perpetrated a new attack against the Pearl of the Black Sea, and there have been two in recent days: the first left three dead and 27 injured in a residential area; this adds others three dead and a dozen injuredall civilians who were caught by the missile sleeping peacefully in their homes.
The faces of the Odesians are serious on Wednesday morning, despite the fact that the city has woken up with its usual movement of people raising the blinds in cafes and shops. They get on and off the Soviet-style urban buses with a striking yellow color –characteristic of this city–, trying to cover a situation that is not normal with a patina of normality.
They are at war, even though the combat front is far away. But they have decided to bear with dignity everything that has been happening to them for almost 16 months. The random shelling, water and electricity cuts, the news of relatives and friends killed in combat, who return home to be buried near their sea. There are days when it is not easy to cope.
[Putin baraja “varios planes” y se pregunta si Rusia debería lanzarse otra vez a conquistar Kiev]
And it is enough to take a quick look at the mobile screens of the passengers of one of those yellow buses to see that today, precisely today, is one of those days that are not easy. The same videos are played on almost all the devices: the sound of the explosion, the firefighters fighting the fire, even the interior of the destroyed houses – recorded by their own residents, while they explain what has just happened to them. The videos run through Telegram like wildfire.
The air defense could not
Families who post videos of their houses, with shattered glass and roofs falling over their heads, ask themselves a question: Why? Why is Russia bombing civilians? Why my house? Why my family?
A man records with his mobile how the buildings that a Russian Kalibr-type missile hit were left.
Actually there are many questions, but they can be summed up in one: Why does the international community consent to this barbarism? –that nobody expected– in the 21st century? The answer is not in any of the recordings, but the local authorities try to explain the situation just a few hours later: “The Kremlin has launched this time four Kalibr-type missilesof which the anti-aircraft defense has shot down three; and 10 Shahed suicide drones -of Iranian manufacture-, of which nine have been neutralized”.
As of the early morning, the rescue operations were still active. Both the firefighters and the Civil Protection personnel were busy checking the rubble in case anyone else was trapped. The complex of buildings that received one of the impacts squarely housed residential apartments and a commercial area.
In addition, the explosion blew out each and every one of the windows of the Odesa Polytechnic University, which was located just opposite. Teachers and students helped remove debris from windows, with buckets they filled with glass, in an attempt to clean up the campus. The soundtrack was goosebumps.
Kamikaze drones in the sky
When the full-scale Russian invasion began, the Odesians couldn’t stop looking at the sky; to the sky and the sea, where Putin had his Navy stationed. During the first days of March 2022, the exodus of people fleeing the city by train, bus or car was mixed with the threat – which sounded incredibly real – of an amphibious landing.
Detail of one of the buildings, where there were shops, after the bombing that took place in Odesa on Tuesday night.
In those days, the Kremlin troops had reached the airport of Mykolaiv, and the situation of that city was critical. If Mikolaiv fell, a 130-kilometer walk was enough for the Russian soldiers to enter Odessa by land and thus support the landing on the coasts.
Even the press officers asked you if you had an evacuation plan to leave the city, assuming that it was unstoppable. However, the Ukrainian army managed to pocket one of the four Russian battalions closing in on Mykolaiv, and the rest fell back almost to the border with Ukraine. Kherson. It was a remarkable victory, little talked about in those days; but thanks to that military movement, Odessa is still -almost- intact today.
The fact is that at that time the anti-aircraft defense was already measured against the waves of drones that were launched from the Russian ships that anchored in the Black Sea. The ones back then were reconnaissance drones, and they had no ability to attack people, but with the ghost of the amphibian landing prowlingwere considered extremely dangerous.
Obviously, 16 months ago no one imagined that the use of drones was going to evolve into another weapon of war. A weapon with which Putin launched more than fifteen attacks against the Ukrainian capital –kyiv–, only during the month of May. It seems that this month it will be Odessa’s turn.
What comes from Kherson
The increasing bombardments are not the only concern of the Odesians at the moment. Nor is it the only topic on which videos are published on social networks. During the last week, gruesome scenes have been recorded from the city’s seafront, where refrigerators floating off the coast, dead animals reaching the sand and even mines approaching through the rubble and the garbage carried by the water of the Nova Kakhovka dam.
[Así es la enorme presa ucraniana que Rusia ha volado: 3 km de largo y 18 km cúbicos de agua]
The tide is pulling all kinds of objects from the other side of the Black Sea. And if a year ago the anguish of the Odesians came from the possibility of the fearsome amphibious landing, today it is caused by what the UN has described as a “monumental humanitarian, economic and ecological catastrophe” with as yet unknown consequences.
Firefighters, police, health personnel and Civil Protection went to the scene of the bombing minutes later.
The remains that are reaching the shores of Odessa, among which parts of the houses can be perfectly distinguished -such as the door and window frames-, clothing, footwear or electrical appliances, are accompanied by the statements of environmental experts.
These warn that the flood has swept from factories –with all kinds of materials inside– to cemeteries. Therefore, they do not rule out that human remains may begin to appear floating on both sides of the Black Sea. And this, in view of the hot summer months ahead, could trigger an outbreak of cholera.
passive resistance
Apart from the Telegram videos, the funerals of those who fell on the front lines and the bombardments that have shaken the city a few hours before, a municipal gardener strives to keep the grass clean – which has sprouted green and vigorous – in the park next to the train station.
While the man also prepares the flowers, a young couple sits on one of the terraces that have just opened right next to it, and which are beginning to fill up. Life breaks through. It is the passive resistance that the Ukrainians have decided to exercise, another way of fighting in this war that does not give up.
A police officer is still working the scene hours after the attack.
With it, they say, they are sending a message to Russia: they are not going to bring them to their knees, nor are they going to force them to lock themselves up at home while the country slowly withers. It is surprising to hear their arguments, appealing to the importance of maintaining the country’s economic engine.
When you ask them if they don’t feel bad knowing that their army – that thousands of young soldiers, like them – are fighting on the front lines, they answer that they are precisely fighting so that their people can continue living, working and existing. So that the children play in the parks, like the one that extends next to the Odessa Train Station, and so that those who remain in the rear do not allow themselves to be seen defeated.
