ReportageOnly 10% of Ukrainian port workers in the region remain active. A disaster for this key sector.
On the dike, two friends in leopard bikinis relax in the sun in front of the panel “Danger, mines”. White tape forbids access to the beach, but bath towels fight over every inch of concrete around it. In the blue of the sky, the cranes of the port stand out, motionless as a backdrop. When three missiles suddenly streak the horizon, the children are called back and the picnics are reluctantly put away. In Odessa, on the shores of the Black Sea, going up the pier amid the noise of the bars is like walking along the front line. “Yes, the front line. Does it make you laugh ? », asks a sailor. Here, the war offers an image, which it has nowhere else. Yet she is there.
Since the start of the Russian invasion on February 24, the inhabitants have been looking to the sea. Russian military boats approached the city, in March and April, “way of being seen, a kind of permanent pressure, says Julia Himerik, a young journalist. We were sure they would invade us there. » The Russian fleet is also the only one to sail now, with the blockade on the Black Sea established by Moscow: a disaster for all of Ukraine, 75% of whose exports are made by boat.
Representative of the port authority in Odessa, Dmytro Barinov pays lip service to the negotiation of a hypothetical trade corridor. He doesn’t really believe it himself. The sea is mined, cleaning it will take time, and marine insurance will not rush to cover this route, or else for a crazy price. In any case, wouldn’t the Russian forces take advantage of this secure corridor to disembark? In Odessa, the trap has closed. On the deserted quays, the long wait begins, a drama for the city, no doubt more intimate, that of the banished from the sea.
“We must face up”
“Our income since the blockade? Zero “, says Andrey Stavnitser, 39, a major port operator in the region. He remembers his dread, already, at the time of the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014: “We realized that 100 well-trained people would be enough to take Odessa by surprise. » At the time, a secret plan was decided upon with the shareholders of TIS (Transport Ivent Service), the grain terminal founded by the Stavnitsers and the largest in the Black Sea: if the Russian military occupied the city, TIS itself would destroy its facilities. Anything rather than leaving them to Moscow and those who work in Ukraine for the rallying. Today, Andrey Stavnitser isn’t sure the same decision would be made, assuming the worst. Things are changing, he says.
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