(Odessa, Ukraine) As I write these lines, the elegant port city of Odessa is plunged into another evening of darkness. Since the last Russian strike on infrastructure, electricity has been disrupted. Two hours would suddenly come and go, not knowing how long. Drinking water has been distributed, but some buildings are still without water.
Despite it all, Violetta Diduk, my guide, was dressed to the nines, her fingernails flawlessly pink, a small blue and yellow silk scarf in Ukrainian colors, and lipstick to match her coat. Fuchsia. I admire her for her resilience and desire to be beautiful. She sighed and spilled the beans: “I can’t bear to be congratulated! Of course we are determined, and of course we will not submit. Surely ! But what we need is not praise! These are the weapons that will attack the Russians internally to end this war that is going nowhere! »
Is this war going nowhere? I have been here for 10 days and have the same feeling. What is it about these missile attacks that are mass-pulverizing the Ukrainian military, that these attacks hurt the most vulnerable first? Who is Vladimir Putin really targeting? Babushka Thani?
As Europe, America and Canada talk about reconstruction under the initiative of France, Violetta pleads with the West to give her country everything it needs to end the war. How many deaths? Over a hundred thousand? And the injured? And the refugees? And shocked?
Because in addition to these surreal strikes, there is war in the east and south of the country, which is trampling and causing human damage. Precisely, a few hours ago, I met two people displaced from Kherson, the city of martyrs. Olga Pavelko, 72, and Ludmilla Rudenko, 53, each described to me the horrors they experienced; Dead bodies strewn in the streets, shelling, burnt houses.
Driven out of the city by an incredible attack by the Ukrainian army, the Russians, hoping that we will give up under pressure as they did in Mariupol last spring, defy all the traditions of war, target civilians and pulverize everything like cries of rage. But it was nothing. Again, it’s going nowhere.
Volodymyr Omelyan, Ukraine’s former infrastructure minister and now a soldier, returns from four weeks at the front in Kherson. He explains to me: “The Russians don’t think like us. With them, the individual does not count. Our men had to face waves of poorly trained soldiers who were systematically shot down. Bodies pile up like garbage (another humanitarian disaster). And it uses. Then the tireless cannon. The same scene in the eastern region around the town of Bagmouth, where images on social media recall World War I trench warfare. And, it’s not going anywhere.
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Photo by PAULE ROBITAILLE
Violeta Diduk, guide in Odessa
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Photo by PAULE ROBITAILLE
Ukraine’s former infrastructure minister turned captain in the Ukrainian army, Volodymyr Omilyan, Ukrainian-born Canadian businessman Daniel Bilak, now a member of the regional security forces.
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Photo by PAULE ROBITAILLE
Natalia is drinking tea by candlelight in a restaurant in Odessa.
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Photo by PAULE ROBITAILLE
“Country of Balls”. A seller loads up a T-shirt at a shop in Odessa. The shop is open despite the power outage.
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Photo by PAULE ROBITAILLE
Lyudmila Rudenko and her mother moved from Kherson to Odessa
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Photo by PAULE ROBITAILLE
A building in Odessa
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“The Russians want to wear us out,” the former minister-turned-captain tells me. They must be fluttered so that the steam passes through the cylinder. But Ukraine is unmoved and the war continues. Thus, in Odessa, in addition to the 100,000 displaced every day, there are already people from Kherson and Donbass.
Despite this horrendous humanitarian waste (and I’m not referring to all the victims of this torture), Russia remains on its heels, unable to regain territory lost during the humiliating retreats following the Ukrainian counter-offensives of the fall. For Vladimir Putin, failure leads to a descent into hell. He has all the advantages to prolong the fight wherever he goes.
“The West needs to stop being afraid of escalation,” Daniel Billock, a friend and Canadian businessman turned soldier working for regional security, reiterates to me. Indeed, there is a widespread feeling among officials and the public here that, barring nuclear proliferation (which is no longer possible, as Russia will gain nothing from it), Vladimir Putin’s forces cannot do more against Ukraine in retaliation than they have already done. So Russia will already be at the end of its capabilities.
So Ukraine moves into second gear. She is no longer waiting for the green light from the West. For the past week, with its own drones, it has been blowing up ammunition depots, railway bridges, fuel depots and military bases inside Russia and Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine.
“We cannot stand idly by as our infrastructures are demolished! Violetta tells me, a woman who has nothing to do with a little bit of a warmonger. She was right.
This is not an escalation, as some claim, but a necessary political and military move to limit the humanitarian harm of Russia’s brutal drone and missile attacks on Ukraine. But to succeed, the Ukrainian army cannot do it with its own arsenal, it needs American and European weapons.
I tell Violetta that the soldier-turned-former infrastructure minister is looking forward to a win and a holiday on the Crimean coast next summer. A huge smile forms on her fuchsia lips. She wants to believe it. “You will stop in Odessa, I hope. You will see, the opera will light up! It is very beautiful! And we will talk about other things than elasticity. »
