‘They Have their Own Version of the Truth. We Are Living Ours’: Sandbagging in Odessa

Russian journalist Elena Kostyuchenko has vowed to be a ‘professional witness’ of the war in Ukraine. Here, she journeys through Odessa. Translated from Russian by Ilona Yazhbin Chavasse

I get to Odessa by train, from Lviv. The train is half-empty. I share my compartment with Roman, a lieutenant colonel with the Ukrainian Reserve Army. He’s travelling from Szszecin in Poland, where he left his family, and is hoping to get to the war.

“First I’ll try my own division. I hope they take me, I mean, I’m a career soldier.” Roman calls his mother and tells her that he’s got a bag full of food, but he can’t eat right now, he’s just drinking coffee. 

The blackout curtains are drawn and the light is only switched on at stops. There are no linens or towels on any Ukrainian trains – they’ve all been handed over to the army. 

Odessa is bracing for the Russian troops, who will soon land and storm the city. 

But a different storm – on the Black Sea – forces the ships to withdraw. 

You can’t get to the sea. The Luzanovka beach, which is shallow and good for landing, has been mined. Fortifications rise along the shoreline. The neighbourhoods by the sea are open only to local residents. 

The city is run by Teroborona, a volunteer territorial defence corps which was formed as a sub-unit of the Ukrainian Army. It began recruiting on the second day of the war and, within 30 minutes, had to start turning volunteers away. Now, you have to have connections to actually get in, though they are still taking names for the waiting list. If the city comes under attack, these volunteers will be drafted.

Teroborona is in charge of strategic points, checking people’s documents, looking for saboteurs and “enemy spies”, detaining looters. Despite concerns early on, there was no widespread looting, but the isolated cases are sophisticated: they put on police uniform, or pass themselves off as police aides. Here, they tie looters to streetlamps with packing tape.  

The territorial defenders wear a yellow armband on their right arms. Young guys, and a silver-bearded old man – some of them hide their faces from the cold. When the Russian Army arrives, Teroborona will switch to guerrilla warfare. “We’ve got lots of surprises for them.”

Andrei Vladimirovich, a former police officer, now fights with Teroborona. “I was born and bred in Odessa. I’m speaking with you now in perfect Russian. But no one here’s ever been discriminated against for speaking it.” 

“I speak Ukrainian perfectly,” he says in Ukrainian, and continues in Russian. “Of the two languages, I love Ukrainian more – it’s the language of my nation. But I grew up in a Russian-speaking family and I speak Russian every day. No one has ever discriminated against the Russian-speaking population here. No one. Ever.

“I lived in the Russian Federation for a time, in Siberia, and they treated the Ukrainians there worse than we do the Russians here. They tell you, over there, that we’re Banderites. I wasn’t one before, but I am now.

“I apprehended a saboteur myself, the day before yesterday. He was pretending to be homeless, picking through that trash bin over there. He’d been hanging around for two days, keeping an eye on our fortifications. And, wouldn’t you know it, he had a wonderfully clean face on him, straight white teeth. He told me he was homeless. In a nice pair of sneakers so he could run away faster, right. He had a passport and a brand-new map of Ukraine. Issued in December. When our guys came down, they started checking him out. ‘Olegovich, right?’ ‘No, Alexandrovich,’ he says. And the passport says Vladimirovich. We took all his papers off him, found his military ID. A sharp shooter. We handed him over to counter-intelligence.

“I hope Putin will have the sense not to bomb Odessa. Why? Because it’s the only big Ukrainian town the Russians say they founded. How could they live with themselves? Catherine the Great built it. I think Odessa is some kind of sacred spot for them. Just the idea of it, right? Everyone in the world knows about Odessans and their sense of humour! If you kill them, it better be funny. How could they do this? To go and kill Russian-speaking people, just like them.

“They don’t want to bomb Odessa, not Putin and not the generals. They’re just making it look like they’re attacking Odessa. Look, yesterday there was a bomber, it flew over Odessa and dropped two bombs just outside the city. Supposedly it was bombing Krasnoselka, we have an army base there. It dropped two rockets. Into an estuary. The rocket came down in the estuary, the next one did the same, and no one was killed, zero casualties. So the pilot did his job. Did he complete the mission? He did. Did he bomb the army base? He did. So he happened to miss. Everyone’s happy, no big deal. He did as he was ordered. So that’s why I think Odessa will be all right.  

“But Putin, he’ll end up at the Hague, or his own lot will kill him. You’ll see. He’s only got the two options. He’s not going to die peacefully in his bed, that’s for sure.”

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The houses in Odessa are flying Ukrainian colours – you’d think it was some kind of holiday. The flags come out in the morning and are taken down by curfew – they’re afraid that looters or saboteurs will steal them at night. The flags are precious. They had to issue specific instructions about taking down the flags for the night, because the first time there were a lot of panicked phone calls about it. 

At the tram depot they’re using rails to make anti-tank hedgehogs. They’re weaving camouflage nets at the yacht club. Otrada and Chernomorka, the two beaches, are waiting for volunteers to help pack sandbags, which will reinforce barricades and checkpoints. Lots of people have been in the sand – it’s “good for taking your mind off things”.

Nearly all the young people are involved in defence. They make the rounds of the shuttered cafes, collecting bottles and sunflower oil. They go out to find insulin for the diabetics, because there’s a shortage. They help refugees get to the border. Odessa’s tattoo artists have agreed that each flat fee – about $100 – will be sent to the Ukrainian Army. 

The Privoz, Odessa’s main market, is closed. Deribasovskaya Street is blocked by sandbags, café tables, and concrete slabs. There are barricades every 50 metres. They’re checking documents; a bearded guy with green eyes takes my passport. “Oh, you’re Russian.” They call a friend over.

“They battered Kharkiv with Grad rockets. Just now. I’m from Azerbaijan myself, you understand? This will never be forgotten, never forgiven. We will never be with you. My son is 15. I’ll make sure he has nothing to do with any of you, ever!”

Behind him, students pour sand in bags. From the bags, rises the barricade.

The opera house is the heart of Odessa. It is ringed by barricades. 

Richelieu Street, nearby, is the site of a volunteer centre – one of several, but this is the biggest. Other sites provide hot and packed lunches and coordinate aid for the elderly, children, refugees, and diabetic patients. Many of the volunteer groups formed via Telegram and now there are professional athletes, chess players, lawyers, and mothers of large families at work delivering food, taking people to the border, and ferrying medication back into Ukraine, since the Moldovan guards allow medicine to be passed across the border.

The site at Richelieu Street takes in and sorts aid packages for the army, the police, and the territorial defence cadre. Before the war, this was a central gathering place, an open-air food market. The volunteers wear orange and yellow vests and everyone moves quickly. There are 80 people working today.

Inga says: “We’ve got the drive and the energy to make this work. And also we’ve got a whole team of extremely efficient managers and entrepreneurs, the best in the city, and they’ve all c