Odessa: Russian-speaking, yes. But today, very Ukrainian.
With quiet determination, in a hidden workshop in the strategic southern Ukrainian city of Odessa, Yevhen dons a welder’s helmet and lays a bead of molten metal to join lengths of construction girders.
He is building anti-tank barriers to help stop a Russian assault that could come at any moment against this cosmopolitan hub, renowned for its classical architecture and often deemed among the most “pro-Russian” cities in Ukraine.
In normal times, the 28-year-old welder and guitarist, with a hipster beard and indie band, would be thinking about his next live gig.
But as the multipronged Russian invasion moves ever closer to this Black Sea port, Yevhen is an example of how the brutality of Moscow’s war has changed minds here, and forged what residents describe as unprecedented, pro-Ukrainian unity.
Yevhen knows, because the native Russian speaker says his own views have changed, from being “neutral” on Russia to being ardently pro-Ukrainian. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned Sunday that captured Russian military plans led him to
