The port of Odessa, in southern Ukraine, is a fortress guarded by the military. Apart from the army, only employees can enter. Few people agree to talk on the way out. The man who agrees to break the silence asks us to keep his name silent. He is the head of ship loading for a company. “Since the beginning of the war, maritime navigation has stopped, and for the moment, we do not welcome or receive ships, he said. We wanted to prepare for the resumption of loading but the Russians sign an agreement with one hand and they launch missiles with the other hand, as we have seen.
On Saturday the Russian army bombarded Odessa, just 24 hours after the signing of an agreement between Russia, Ukraine and Turkey in Istanbul for the revival of grain exports. Moscow claims that these strikes were aimed “only military infrastructure” and kyiv hopes to be able to start exporting wheat, corn and even barley again this week.
The port staff are ready but the manager we met remains suspicious: “Odon’t expect anything good. We have two ships hostage to Russia’s aggression, we wonder how to get them out of port. No one guarantees their safety. We are afraid that they will be shot during navigation”.
“The crews and the boats with which we work are foreign and the Russians have no right to fire on them, otherwise it would be an international conflict”.
A cargo manager at the port of Odessaat franceinfo
The port of Odessa is a small world with its stranded foreign sailors occasionally going out to do their shopping. And employees with a wide variety of tasks who must present authorization and identity papers at each visit. Oksana and Valia are responsible for cleaning the offices. They returned Monday for the first time to their post since the Russian strikes on Saturday. “At the start of the war, the port offered us to work twice a week, several people refused, they say in one voice. We had no choice, we accepted because it We have to feed our children. We have to work somewhere.”
>>> War in Ukraine: “Bring them back!”, the cry from the heart of the wives of soldiers after five months on the front opens a breach in the unity of the country
Right next to the port it is the inhabitants residing nearby who live in expectation. Saturday’s strikes were extremely powerful, says this grandmother, Nadia, whose house shook: “My grandchildren were white with fear. I’m scared too… But we have nowhere to go.”