Under fire from the sea, Ukrainian families in Odesa try to escape Russian barrage

From Mariia’s 16th-floor flat, the calm waters of the Black Sea stretch out into the horizon beneath the fading twilight.

“Up here you can see and hear when the drones come,” she says, standing by a wall-length, floor-to-ceiling window. When they hit buildings and homes in the city of Odesa down below “we see all the fires too”.

Her daughter Eva, who is nine, has learned the shapes and sounds of the objects that zoom through the sky on a daily basis. She proudly shows off a list of social media channels she checks when the air raid alerts go off.

“She knows whether what’s coming is a risk or a threat, and that calms her down,” her father Sergii says.

There is scarcely a place in Ukraine that has not been targeted since Russia launched its full-scale invasion nearly four years ago.

But in recent weeks Odesa – Ukraine’s third largest city – has come under sustained attack. Through strikes on port and energy infrastructure, Russia is trying to cripple the region’s economy and dent the population’s morale.

Moscow, however, does not just hit facilities. Its drones, most of them as big as a motorcycle, regularly crash into high-rise buildings like Masha’s, exploding on impact and blowing glass and debris inward. The consequences are often deadly.

“A few months ago Eva said she was afraid the drone would come too fast and we wouldn’t have time to hide,” Mariia says. “But I explained that if it came towards us, it would get louder and louder and then we’d know we have to run.”

Mariia, Sergii and Eva are originally from Kherson, a region 200km (125m) to the east of Odesa which is now in large part occupied by Russia.

They left as soon as the invasion started in 2022 and mother and daughter briefly moved to Germany as refugees. But Sergii and Mariia could not bear the distance, so the family reunited in Ukraine and moved to Odesa.

Now, as attacks on the region intensify, Sergii wonders whether the family should prepare to leave again. “War is only about economics, and Odesa for the Russians is about infrastructure, so they will do their best to conquer it,” he says.

Tucked in south-western Ukraine, Odesa was an economic powerhouse before the war. But now that Russia occupies the majority of Ukraine’s coastline, the region has become even more vital. Its three ports are Ukraine’s largest and include the country’s only deep-water port. With land crossings disrupted, 90% of Ukraine exports last year were shipped by sea.

But in wartime the region’s importance is also its weakness.

Last month, Vladimir Putin threatened to cut off Ukraine’s access to the sea in retaliation for Ukrainian strikes on the “shadow fleet” tankers Russia uses to circumvent sanctions.

That threat has translated into concrete impact. For two years, Russia’s attempts to thwart Odesa’s economy have been near-relentless – but the last few weeks have been particularly difficult.

Aerial attacks on the ports have destroyed cargo and containers and damaged infrastructure; crew members on foreign merchant ships operating in the Gulf of Odesa have been injured or killed by drones; and 800 air-raid alerts in a year repeatedly halted port operations.

The result last year was a 45% decrease in exports of agricultural products, vital to Odesa’s economy.

The day after a drone strike this week set a Panamanian-flagged ship alight and severely injured one of its crew members, regional government head Oleh Kiper said that shipowners entering Odesa ports “clearly understand that they are entering a war zone” and that the ships were insured.

But if such attacks continue, in the long run foreign companies may be put off trading with the port.

As the strikes surge, air sirens go off frequently, but not everyone heeds them. Standing in front of a destroyed gym the morning after an overnight drone strike that injured seven people, Maryna Averina of the State Emergency Service concedes people have become “very careless about their own safety”.

A recent air raid alert lasted for most of the day. “Sitting in a shelter for 16 hours is simply unrealistic,” Averina says, as gym staff emerge from the destroyed building with whatever objects they have managed to salvage from the rubble and mangled metal inside.

While many Ukrainians are now sadly accustomed to the drone and missile strikes, they are increasingly frayed by the relentless attacks that cut off electricity and heating in the middle of a particularly biting winter.

In December, almost a million people in Odesa were left with no power. “We were among the first regions to experience what it means to go through the winter period without electricity and without heating,” says Oleh Kiper.

A month later, as temperatures hover around -1C, the supply remains severely disrupted.

Ada, 36, is strolling on the beach, unfazed by the wail of air alert sirens mingling with the squawking of seagulls. The drone attacks have ramped up but, she says, “the shelling isn’t as scary as this cold is”.

Nearby, a young mum named Yana agrees. Recently, she says, the situation across the board “has been really, really difficult”. At one point, a drone crashed into her flat, and another one hit the block soon afterwards.

Then came the power cuts. She and her family bought an expensive generator, but running it for seven hours costs around $10 – a significant expense in a country where the average monthly salary is around $500 (£375).

“We’ve all been living like this for four years now, unfortunately. We’re as helpless as flies, and everything is just being decided between the authorities,” she says, while struggling to keep her shrieking toddler out of the icy water.

“Maybe we’re being punished for something – the whole nation, not just a few, but everyone.”

Further down the beach, Kostya is fishing on a jetty stretching out into the sea. He says he is not worried about the Russians advancing to the city. “I don’t think they’ll make it here. [The Ukrainians] will break their legs first.”

But, he adds, things are painful, and scary. And like many Ukrainians he still seems to struggle to accept that war came to his country four years ago, waged by a neighbour he once knew so well.

In his youth, Kostya served in the army and swore an oath to the Soviet Union. “I never imagined that I would see something like this in my old age,” he says.

While Russian propagandists have long insisted that Ukraine’s independence since 1991 is a historical mistake, Odesa’s past role as the jewel in the crown of the Russian empire means it still holds particularly strong symbolic importance for Moscow.

Vladimir Putin has repeatedly referred to Odesa as a “Russian city” and frequently invoked the notion of “liberating Novorossiya”, a historical region of the Russian empire that encompassed parts of modern southern and eastern Ukraine, including Odesa.

“They wanted and they still want to seize Odesa, just like many other regions, but today everything possible and impossible is being done by our military to prevent this from happening,” insists the regional government leader.

Oleh Kiper has made it a personal mission to sever any perceived remaining ties that Odesa has with Russia. He is a staunch supporter of a 2023 Law on Decolonisation, which directed local authorities to rid their cities of any street names, monuments or inscriptions that could be linked to Russia’s imperial past.

Among the statues to be removed was a monument to the founder of Odesa, Russian Empress Catherine the Great, while streets named after Russian and Soviet figures were renamed. Pushkin Street became Italian Street, and Catherine Street is now European Street. Kiper also champions the usage of Ukrainian in a city where Russian is still very widely spoken.

Asked about the resistance he meets from Odesites who are proud of their heritage as a multicultural port to the world, he is defiant.

“The enemy is doing far more than we are to ensure that a Russian-speaking city becomes Ukrainian,” says Kiper. “It is forcing people to understand who the Russians are and whether we need them at all.”

The following day, as temperatures dropped to -6C, the city marked one month of partial blackouts, and air raid alerts were in force for four hours. The port of Chernomorsk, east of Odesa, was again hit by a ballistic missile, injuring a crew member on a civilian ship.

As is the case with the rest of Ukraine, if Russia cannot have Odesa, it seems determined to continue crippling it.

Additional reporting by Liubov Sholudko