Before the start of a full-scale invasion, there was still some sympathy for Russia in Ukraine. These were very different feelings: from nostalgia for the USSR, which was extrapolated to modern Russia, to cultural and historical sentiments in relation to the “Russian” history of the region and the city. It is obvious that those people who sympathized with Russia and in a nightmare could not imagine that they would “come to be liberated.”
With the outbreak of the war, such sympathies were almost gone. The brutal and unprovoked invasion showed the essence of the Putin regime to the entire world, including those in Ukraine who thought, hoped, or were deceived by “culture” and a shared “glorious history.”
The political project of the separation of Odesa and the entire South of Ukraine did not take place in 2014, largely due to the fact that it did not have support and a base among the residents of the city and the south of Ukraine as a whole. Even before the start of the war, and the annexation of Crimea in 2014, if there were any pro-Russian rallies, they looked like a bunch of freaks and attracted at most a couple of dozen or a hundred people, and the Odessans themselves were of little interest. Conductor of the “Russian world” in Odessa in the 2010s. was a well-known businessman with a criminal past, Igor Markov. An explosive mixture of the “Russian world”, nostalgia for the Soviet past, and the methods of wild capitalism allowed him to get (bribe) some part of the voters and become a People’s Deputy of Ukraine, joining the then majority – the Party of Regions. But rather quickly it turned out that the Party of Regions had no ideology, but had interests, which was at odds with the plans of the separatist deputy Markov.
All attempts to separate the South of Ukraine in 2014-2015. were stopped by the special services of Ukraine. And Markov himself, released from the Detention Facility during the Revolution of Dignity (he ended up in prison during the time of Yanukovych), fled to Russia, where he became a full-time commentator on a pro-government media zombie show.
In the 2010s Russia lost the geostrategic game. The EU and NATO, as a free market and security sphere, first became an alternative, and then the goal of the Ukrainian state. Russia, with its authoritarianism and monstrous inequality, the poverty of the regions, and the fattening stratum close to power, became not only unattractive but was perceived as something retrograde, from the past. The irremovability of Vladimir Putin’s power led to the fact that the ruling elite, on the one hand, lost the feedback mechanism with its people, on the other hand, it convinced itself that Russia should restore the “injustice of the collapse of the USSR.”
Despite the hybrid war and full-scale aggression, the Russian Federation has lost a large part of its influence and allies. One of the foundations of the Kremlin’s propaganda was the belief that the “Russian-speaking” regions of southern Ukraine were waiting for “liberation”. As 2022 showed, they did not wait for the “Russian world”, but resisted.
On July 23, 2023, with a massive strike on the peaceful residential areas of Odessa, Russia finally buried its hopes to seize this territory. It can still launch rockets and kill civilians, terrorize with night shelling, but it has lost the most important thing – the fight for minds, and ideas. Nothing but impotent rage and a desire to destroy everything that Soviet missiles fired from Soviet bombers reach (fortunately, Russia does not have many modern weapons systems).
Will this day become a rubicon in the attitude of the West towards Russia? Probably not. There has already been massive shelling of Kharkiv and the Dnipro, there was Bucha and places of torture in Kherson, and tragedies in Kropyvnytskyi, Kramatorsk, and other cities and villages of Ukraine.
What should the West do? You should think rationally. Russia is a threat. And this threat must be eliminated. Russia is the Taliban, which has nuclear weapons and long-range missiles. Russia is a country with an authoritarian ruler and great support from the people. Give Ukraine more air defense! Now this is more important than the discussion of post-war reconstruction. Give Ukraine more air defense, otherwise, the need to restore will be much greater.
On the night of July 23, 2023, Odesa was attacked by five types of missiles. Most of the Ukrainian air defense systems were shot down, but the main Orthodox cathedral in Odesa was destroyed, residential buildings in the city center, which is under the protection of UNESCO, were destroyed. On the morning of July 23, one person killed, 19 were injured.
Photos – from the official channels of the Odesa City Hall in social networks.
Stanislav Kinka
