On Friday, Russian, Turkish and Ukrainian authorities signed a grain deal in Istanbul. The next day, however, Moscow bombed Odessa, a strategic port on the Black Sea. Proof, according to the population, that you should never believe Russia.
Article written by
Posted
Reading time : 1 min.
He took off his uniform for a family outing. This soldier, who preferred to remain anonymous, was deployed to Odessa, in southern Ukraine, at the start of the war. The cereals agreement signed Friday, July 22 between Russia, Turkey and Ukraine in Istanbul worries him. He thinks of the first freighters that will leave the city:“It will first be dangerous for the people who will be on the ships. The agreement with Russia is not even worth the paper it was signed on. I don’t trust them.”
“They arrived on our land and they decide what is best for us and for them.”
A Ukrainian soldierat franceinfo
If these exports are supposed to leave via humanitarian corridors, on Saturday, as the conflict entered its sixth month, the Russian army struck Odessa. The grain storage area was not affected, but these strikes cast doubt on the smooth running of the process. Micha, who displays a broad, ironic smile, is not surprised by the Russian volte-face: “Come to Mykolaiv, we’ll show you our city. And what Russia has done with it.”
>> War in Ukraine: follow the evolution of the situation live
Mykolaiv, 130 km northeast of Odessa, is indeed bombarded daily. Micha came to breathe in Odessa for a day, with his wife: “To Mykolaiv, almost nothing works anymore, she explains. You don’t meet anyone on the street. We have 10 to 20 missiles that can arrive every day.”
Odessa, by comparison, is peaceful of course. But Olena, 25, remains on her guard: “In our city, people are quite quiet, they stay, they don’t leave and the children walk around. But you don’t know what to expect tomorrow”. The sirens, regular, remind, if necessary, that the Russians are not far.