Global Courant
ODESA, Ukraine — Tetiana Khlapova’s hand trembled as she picked up the wreckage of Odessa’s ruined Transfiguration Cathedral on her cellphone and cursed Russia, her native land.
Khlapova grew up in Ukraine and always dreamed of living in the city by the sea. But not as the war refugee she has become.
In just a week, Russia has fired dozens of missiles and drones into the Odessa region. None went as deep as the one that destroyed the cathedral, which is at the heart of the city’s romantic, infamous past and its deep roots in both Ukrainian and Russian culture.
“I am a refugee from Kharkiv. I endured that hell and came to sunny Odessa, the pearl, the heart of our Ukraine,” says Khlapova, who has lived in the country for 40 of her 50 years.
Her neck still has a shrapnel scar from the third day of the war, when her apartment was hit. On day 4 she fled to Odessa.
Now she rushes back to her home in Kharkiv to pack winter clothes so she can wait out the war in Ireland, “because here we are not protected for a second, in any city.”
“You can be hit at any moment and your whole body will be torn apart,” she said. “After the end of the war – and I believe Ukraine will beat this filth, these vampires – I will come back home. I will return no matter what.”
Since Ukraine gained independence from Moscow in 1991, Odesa has seen itself as different from the country’s other major cities due to its long, conflicting history and outlook that extends far beyond its borders.
Odessa’s past is intertwined with some of Russia’s most revered figures, including Catherine the Great, author Leo Tolstoy, and poet Anna Akhmatova.
The ports were key to last year’s international agreement that allowed Ukraine and Russia to ship their grain to the rest of the world. The Orthodox Cathedral belongs to the Moscow Patriarchate. Most residents speak Russian. And – at least until the Kremlin illegally annexed the nearby Crimean peninsula in 2014 – the beaches were loved by Russian tourists.
In the first weeks of the war, rumors spread through the Kremlin’s propaganda: Moscow would never reach the historic center, the mayor had loaded a boat full of roses to greet Russian soldiers, a silent majority of the inhabitants was waiting for a Russian “liberation”.
They were false.
“To this day, if you read and follow the Russian channels, they are all absolutely convinced that we are waiting for them here,” said Hanna Shelest, a political and security researcher who grew up in Odessa, whose father is a harbor master.
Odessa’s regional infrastructure was repeatedly hit by Russia during the winter, unlike its port, which was key to the Black Sea Grain Initiative, allowing agricultural products to be safely shipped from both countries to feed people around the world.
Silos in the region were full when Russia pulled out of the agreement in mid-July. Missiles and drones struck the next day, targeting warehouses, transportation infrastructure and random buildings. Ukraine’s air defense repelled most of the hits, but a handful succeeded each day.
Last week’s attacks marked the first time since the start of the war that Odesa’s historic city center was hit.
Mayor Hennadii Trukhanov was unequivocal in a furious video message directed at the Russians after Sunday’s attack on the cathedral, showing rescuers carefully removing a damaged icon from the ruins.
“If you only knew how much Odesa hates you. Doesn’t just hate you. Despise you. You’re fighting little kids, the Orthodox Church. Your missiles even fall on cemeteries,” he said. ‘You probably hardly know us Odessans. You’re not destroying us, you’re just making us angrier.”
Another rocket crashed into the House of Scientists, a mansion that once belonged to the Tolstoy family and was turned into an institution to unite scholars and researchers. A third affected administrative and apartment buildings.
The targets were within 200 meters (yards) of the harbour. Sheles believes the cathedral was hit by accident, but that’s little comfort amid the devastation.
Since Catherine the Great transformed Odessa into an international seaport in 1794, the city’s identity has rested on the sea, cosmopolitan tolerance and an innate sense of humour. It had one of Europe’s largest concentrations of Jews, who made up about a quarter of the population before a series of pogroms, and large communities of Greek and Italian sailors whose descendants survive to this day.
A week of attacks shook those foundations for Iryna Grets, who has at least three generations of family in the city.
“Every morning I go to the sea to witness the sunrise. But today I didn’t have the strength to go to the sea because we haven’t slept all night. See, we haven’t slept all week,” said Grets, who instead decided to visit bombed site every Sunday.
She started in the cathedral, in the center of life in Odessa. The original structure was destroyed in 1936 under the leadership of Josef Stalin as part of his campaign against religion. When Ukraine became independent, residents took out a fund to restore it to its original state. In 2010, the new building was inaugurated by Patriarch Kirill, leader of the Russian Orthodox Church.
Kirill, whose church has aligned itself with Russian President Vladimir Putin, has since repeatedly justified war in Ukraine.
“Every missile that arrives today on the territory of Ukraine is seen by the inhabitants as your ‘blessing’ for their children,” Archbishop Viktor Bykov, the vicar of the Odessa Diocese of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, wrote in an open letter to Kirill.
Grets’ bitter pilgrimage had less to do with religion than with mourning, and many others made the same journey on Sunday. Some attended a service outside the damaged cathedral. More came to clean up debris, instead of enjoying the famous beaches in spite of the beckoning summer sun.
“This is my city, it’s part of me, it’s my soul, it’s my heart,” Grets said.
Then, enraged at her, she abruptly switched to Ukrainian: “Odesa will never be part of Russia.”
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Hinnant reported from Paris.
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