End this war that is going nowhere!

(Odessa, Ukraine) As I write these lines, Odessa, the sumptuous port city, plunges into darkness for another evening. Since the last Russian strikes on infrastructure, electricity has staggered. It comes back suddenly for two hours and then disappears, we don’t know for how long. The water supply has been patched, but some buildings do not yet have one.

Despite everything, Violetta Diduk, my guide, arrives at the hotel dressed to the nines, her fingernails impeccably pink, the small blue and yellow silk scarf in the colors of Ukraine and the lipstick matching her coat. fuchsia. I tell her of my admiration for her resilience, for her desire to be beautiful. She sighs and spills the beans: “I can’t stand being congratulated! Of course we are determined, of course we will not submit. Sure ! But it’s not admiration that we need! These are weapons to strike the Russians at home, to put an end to this war which is going nowhere! »

This war that is going nowhere? I have been here for 10 days and have the same feeling. What are these missile attacks that the Ukrainian army is overwhelmingly pulverizing, these attacks that hurt the most vulnerable first? Who is Vladimir Putin really targeting? Babushka Tania?

While Europe, the United States and Canada come together under the initiative of France to talk about reconstruction, Violeta implores the West to give her country whatever it takes to end this war. which is going nowhere. How many deaths? More than a hundred thousand? And the injured? And the refugees? And the traumatized?

Because in addition to these surreal strikes, there is the war in the east and in the south of the country which is trampling and which is also causing human damage. Precisely, a few hours earlier, I met two displaced people from Kherson, a martyr city. Olga Pavelko, 72, and Ludmilla Rudenko, 53, each in turn described to me the horror scenes they had just experienced; corpses strewn in the streets, rains of shells, charred houses.

The Russians, driven from the city by an incredible offensive of the Ukrainian army, pulverize everything like a cry of rage, flouting all the conventions of war, targeting civilians, hoping that we give up under the pressure as we did in Mariupol last spring. But it is nothing. Again, it’s not going anywhere.

Volodymyr Omelyan, former Minister of Infrastructure of Ukraine and now a soldier, returns from four weeks on the front in Kherson. He explains to me: “The Russians don’t think like us. With them, the individual does not count. Our men have to face waves of poorly trained soldiers, who are systematically shot down. Bodies pile up (another humanitarian disaster) like rubbish. And it uses. Then there is the artillery that pounded tirelessly. The same scenario on the eastern front, around a town called Bakhmout, whose images on social media recall the trench battles of the First World War. Also, it’s not going anywhere.

“The Russians want to wear us down,” the ex-minister turned captain tells me. They want us to flinch and thus pass the steamroller. But Ukraine is not flinching and the war continues. Thus, in Odessa, in addition to the 100,000 displaced each day, there are already people from Kherson and Donbass.

And despite this terrible humanitarian waste (and I haven’t mentioned all these victims of torture), Russia remains on its heels, unable to regain the territories lost during humiliating retreats following the Ukrainian counter-offensives of the fall. For Vladimir Putin, defeat leads to a descent into hell. He has every advantage in making the fight last… even if it goes nowhere.

“The West must stop being afraid of an escalation,” Daniel Bilak, a friend and Canadian businessman who also converted to a soldier working for territorial defence, repeats to me. Indeed, there is a widespread feeling here among officials and civilians that barring a nuclear escalation (which is no longer believed possible because Russia would gain nothing from it), Vladimir Putin’s armies cannot do more against Ukraine in retaliation than they already do. Russia would therefore already be at the end of its abilities.

Ukraine is therefore moving 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 munitions warehouses, railway bridges, fuel depots and military bases inside Russia and Russian-occupied regions of Ukraine.

“We cannot watch our infrastructure being demolished with folded arms! says Violetta to me, a little bit of a woman who has nothing to do with a warmonger. She’s right.

This is not, as some claim, an escalation, but a necessary political and military measure for Ukraine to limit the humanitarian harm from Russia’s brutal drone and missile attacks on the infrastructure of their country and their people. But to succeed, the Ukrainian army cannot do it with its own arsenal, it needs American and European weapons.

I tell Violetta that the ex-minister of infrastructure turned soldier foresees a victory next summer and a holiday on the beaches of Crimea. A big smile forms on her fuchsia lips. She wants to believe it. “You will stop in Odessa, I hope. You will see, the Opera will be illuminated! It’s so beautiful ! And we will talk about other things than resilience. »