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‘We won’t be welcoming the Russians with roses’: Odesa prepares for attack

The port of Odesa in southwestern Ukraine is a prime target for Russia due to its history and strategic position on the Black Sea. As soldiers and volunteers prepare for an assault on the city, even some local figures linked to the underworld have joined the war effort. FRANCE 24’s Mehdi Chebil reports.

Some 30 men form a human chain on an icy, wind-swept Odesa beach: They are shoveling fine sand into white canvas bags and passing them from one man to the next and into the trailer of a truck parked at the Odesa Yacht Club.

Recreational boats in a dry dock evoke happier days of sunny outings on the Black Sea. But on this day, March 10, it is the war that is on everyone’s minds. The thousands of sandbags will be used to barricade Odesa’s city centre, as it calmly prepares for a Russian attack.

On the beach, Roman Brig catches his breath between two shovelfuls, scanning the horizon. Russia’s warships are too far to be visible, but their arrival is only a matter of time, he says.

“It’s just common sense. Their boats won’t approach until the Russian ground forces have taken Mykolaiv [a strategic city 130 km to the east] and they are at the gates of the city. I think fighters who have already infiltrated Odesa will also show their faces then,” Brig, a computer engineer, told FRANCE 24. “So we have to be ready to fight on three fronts at the same time”.

The 45-year-old volunteer has already sent his family to safety in Romania. He has no military experience but wants to make himself useful in any way to defend his city. “If the Russians think we’re going to welcome them with roses, they’re in for a surprise,” he said. “We’ve seen the heroic resistance of cities like Kharkiv: It’s a real source of inspiration for us."

Odesa, founded at the end of the 18th century by the Russian Empress Catherine II, is still largely Russian-speaking, but clearly does not wish to return under Moscow’s rule.

Entrenched
From the Yacht Club, the cranes of Odesa’s port are visible a few kilometres to the north. It is impossible to approach the strategic site, which stopped operating at the start of the conflict. The city centre area adjacent to the port has been barricaded and closed to traffic and a significant part of the sandbags was used there.

Images on social media show the statue of the Duke of Richelieu, a French nobleman who became governor of Odesa after being driven out during the 1789 Revolution, covered by dozens of canvas bags.

Apart from the city centre, transformed into an entrenched camp, the city seems much less prepared for a siege. Unlike Kyiv, there is no tight network of checkpoints with armed men. Several bus lines are still operating, supermarkets are fairly well stocked, and it is relatively easy to find open cafés.

“It was the army that decided to set up this defence to protect the port because it feared an attack by Russian paratroopers,” explained Oleg Bryndak, the deputy mayor of Odesa, who now wears a military khaki jacket emblazoned with yellow and blue crests, the colours of the Ukrainian flag.

Natalia Maltseva, a spokeswoman for the Odesa municipality, says life in the city must go on. “For city hall it’s not just the war. We have to continue managing waste, ensuring that pensions are paid, that hospitals continue to operate normally. It’s important that life doesn’t stop in Odesa,” she said.

As in other cities in Ukraine, the Russian invasion has sparked a sense of unity. The pro-Russian minority, which took to the streets in 2014, has kept a low profile. Odesa’s mayor, Gennadiy Trukhanov, has presented himself as a symbol of the resistance, with frequent media appearances. In an interview with FRANCE 24, the mayor, who always carries a gun, declared that he would “stay until the end” to defend his city.

But many of his constituents are wary of Trukhanov’s ultra-patriotic declarations. The more timid say he is “controversial”; others describe him as a pure and simple “gangster”.

A former Soviet officer and head of a private security company in the ’90s, Trukhanov was alleged to have been involved in questionable real estate transactions worth several million euros, according to the “Panama Papers” and “Paradise Papers” investigative reports. His critics say the mayor’s trajectory bears all the hallmarks of the underworld, and he is still under investigation for corruption.

“Trukhanov has many links to the Russian mafia, which itself is very linked to the FSB [the Russian Federal Security Bureau]. And now he’s telling Putin to piss off... I don't know if he’s really going to stay on till the end. I think the Odesa mafia is mainly waiting to see who will win,” Oleg Mykhailnik, an anti-corruption activist and coordinator of several liberal opposition parties, told FRANCE 24.

Mykhailnik added that several notoriously corrupt local figures, including a former local police chief and a former prosecutor from the Odesa region, have also tried to redeem themselves by taking a strong stance against the Russian invaders. The former prosecutor, Oleg Zhuchenko, implicated in a vast corruption case, has publicly requested that his bail amount of 2.6 million hryvnias (about €80,000) be transferred to the Ukrainian army, as a sign of support for the war effort.

The sincerity of these sudden bursts of patriotism is a secondary matter, says Mykhailnik, the anti-corruption activist. Even if the mayor of Odesa eventually does an about-turn, he said, the population will remain loyal to Kyiv and fight the Russian invasion.

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