ODESA ESCAPED THE worst of the Kremlin’s swift and brutal response to the bombing of the main bridge linking the Crimean Peninsula to mainland Russia on Saturday. Missiles launched by Russian forces rained down on Ukrainian cities across the country last night, striking as far west as Lviv.
Still, the war’s destructive influence and the ongoing threat of drone attacks have forced locals in Odesa to take cover in basements almost every night during the last week. Meanwhile the local economy – normally fuelled by trade from the city’s port and summer tourism – has almost ground to a halt since the country became a war zone.
Last month, Foreign Affairs Minister Simon Coveney visited the strategically located city that lies on the Black Sea near the Moldovan border after the UN brokered a deal between Russia and Ukraine to allow shipments of grain to be exported from Odesa’s port.
These are the only shipments that have safely left the normally busy port since the Russian blockade began at the start of the invasion and two cargo ships were struck by blasts in March.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba hailed it as a “relief for the world” when the first shipment of grain since the blockade began left Odesa in August.
Before being linked with Russian blockades, the port city was known as a melting pot of ethnic Ukrainians and Russians; members of Jewish, Christian, and Islamic faiths; and international students attracted by the city’s universities.
With a normally busy tourism trade, the city had also earned a reputation for hedonist nightlife and postcard pretty squares – which have remained intact since the war began albeit disfigured by military checkpoints and anti-tank barriers.
But the well-preserved 19th-century architecture is a temporary distraction from the city’s precarious economic situation. Away from the frontline but still dealing with the fallout from the Russian invasion, The Journal spoke with a student, a local business, and a rabbi about life in wartime Odesa.
Rabbi Avraham Wolff, Chief Rabbi of Odesa and Southern Ukraine
Rabbi Wolff has just finished Sunday prayers at the Beit Chabad Synagogue in Odesa. At the synagogue’s entrance, people are putting up bunting and laying out tables for Sukkot, a week-long holiday that marks the end of the harvest this week.
Jewish people once made up almost half of Odesa’s population, before pogroms, the Holocaust and Stalinist purges decimated their numbers.
The Soviet-era prohibition on religion further loosened Jewish people’s connection to their faith but despite this, the numbers have slowly increased in recent years. Before the Russian invasion, the city’s Jewish population was estimated at around 40,000.
“We didn’t even close for a minute,” says Rabbi Wolff when I ask him in his office if the synagogue closed in February. “We didn’t miss one prayer.”
Wolff’s two brothers are also rabbis. One brother serves in neighbouring Kherson, which Ukrainian forces have tenuously reclaimed part of, after months of occupation by Russian forces. His other brother is the rabbi for Sevastopol, a port city in Crimea that was annexed by Russia in 2014 and the location of the Russian Navy’s main base in the Black Sea.
“My brother worked as a rabbi in Sevastopol when it was part of Ukraine and after,” says Wolff. “He is there to help the Jewish community. It’s not about politics.”
Earlier in the year the orphanage run by Beit Chabad Synagogue was relocated to Berlin. “We rented a hotel for all the children to stay and for them to continue their schooling but it’s very expensive to pay for that every month,” says the rabbi.
An estimated 25,000 Jewish people have left Odesa since the war began, mainly for Germany and Romania. Only women, children and the elderly were allowed to leave as men may be drafted into the military and cannot leave the country while martial law remains in force.
“Only 100-200 people have returned so far,” says Wolff. “I’m worried that 80 per cent will not come back as they will stay a long time [where they were evacuated].”
“People find homes; people find jobs; people find schools for their children, and it becomes more and more comfortable for them to stay.”
“We want to see the war finish and we want people to come back because we love our community, we love our work,” says Wolff. “We feel very safe here. I think Ukraine and our community in Odesa is one of the best places in the world for Jewish people”
Jestin Pallath, medical student
After a childhood spent between Santry in North Dublin and Kerala in Southern India, Jestin moved to Odesa in 2018 to start his medical degree.
Jestin’s mother is a nurse – “she had friends who studied in Odesa and recommended it as a good place to study,” he says sitting at a bench in Deribas City Garden.
In February, during the penultimate year of his degree, Jestin found himself fleeing the country as Russian missiles rained down nearby.
“We ignored the earlier warnings from the Indian Embassy to leave,” he says. “This conflict has been going on for years, so there were always warnings being issued but this time we realised it was serious.”
Along with other Indian students, Jestin travelled by train to Uzhgorod, a city that sits along the Ukrainian border with Slovakia. From there, he made his way to Hungary where the Indian government charted planes to bring students studying in Ukraine back to India.
Back in Kerala, Jestin continued his studies online. “The university started online classes on 14 March,” he says. Staff at his university continued to work from the campus in Odesa while students logged in remotely to finish the academic year.
As the war rumbled on in Ukraine over the summer, Jestin had to decide how and where he would complete the final year of his medical degree.
The medical student was faced with three options. He could transfer to a new university – which many of his classmates have struggled to do – or participate in a mobility programme, which means he would study in person at another university in Georgia linked with his university in Odesa, but his degree would still be awarded in Ukraine.
Or against the advice of the Indian government, he could return to Odesa and complete his degree in person there – which is what he did.
“I have less than a year to finish so I thought it was easiest to return and finish my degree here,” says Jestin. “I just hope nothing happens before then.”
He says campus life is relatively normal – “we’re not able to go swimming at the beach though,” he says. The sea around Odesa is now heavily mined – it will take years for the waters to be made safe again when the war ever does end.
Olana Plyhozhevo, manager of a burlesque club
“People from every part of Ukraine came to Odesa to spend time and socialise or do business,” says Olana, the manager of the Burlesque Club in central Odesa.
Before the Russian invasion, the club ran from 9 pm until 6 am, entertaining tourists and businessmen (and it was pretty much all men) from all over the world.
“We had people visiting from Europe, businessmen from America and lots of tourists and students from Turkey and Israel,” says Olana standing at the bar of the Club where there are more dancers than customers that evening.
The club shut down on 24 February – “we left everything behind” and many of the women who worked there left and went to Romania and Poland for several months. Most of the workers at the club have returned now though – “this is our homeland,” says Olana “this is where we want to be.”
The club re-opened at the end of August but now runs from 3 pm until 11 pm to comply with the curfew in force across the city. The sale of alcohol is also banned after 9 pm.
“Many people who escaped from Kherson and Mykolaiv are now in Odesa and looking for work,” says Olana. “They need to earn.” But with the city’s tourism sector wiped out many of those returning or fleeing fighting elsewhere in Ukraine have struggled to find jobs to support themselves.
Odesa’s unemployment rate increased by 88 per cent from January to July – which is 5% higher than in the rest of Ukraine. At the same time, the prices of food and fuel have soared.
With few job opportunities in the city, some of the women who fled Kherson have started working at the club. ‘They’re supporting their families,” says Olana. “Some of them have kids too.”
“It’s a special job though,” she adds, “not everybody can do it; they need to be courageous and proud of their body.”
Hannah McCarthy is a journalist currently reporting from Ukraine.
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