On the menu today: My coverage of life in Ukraine moves from the capital of Kyiv down south to Odesa, where I witness Ukrainian soldiers showing off their new electronic anti-drone rifles, see old grandmothers working on creating camouflage netting, learn where you can crowdsource the purchase of a self-propelled howitzer, and have a wide-ranging conversation about President Zelensky and the challenges of running a democratically elected government during wartime. And then I was in a room full of joyous, screaming children and bunnies.
The View from Odesa
Odesa, Ukraine — The mood in Odesa is different, simultaneously more relaxed and more tense than Kyiv. More relaxed because this is a beach-resort city, the vacation destination of choice for many Ukrainians and foreigners before the war. And plenty of Ukrainians are still enjoying the summer sun.
But Odesa also feels more tense because late last month, Russia launched another barrage of attacks on this city, destroying most, but not quite all of the critical port facilities and 60,000 tons of grain. The Orthodox Cathedral was bombed and seriously damaged. Keep that in mind the next time someone tells you that Vladimir Putin is some defender of Christianity against the corruptions of the secular West:
Besides the recent attacks from the air, there are still Russian warships and submarines operating in the Black Sea, as well as God knows how many mines floating out there. The locals say, “The front line starts at the water’s edge.” The sights of frolicking crowds on the beachfront are almost normal — until you realize that there is not a single boat in the water, as far as the eye can see in every direction. (As another contested front in this war, Ukraine’s skies are closed to all commercial and civilian aviation. I haven’t seen a plane in the sky since I arrived.)
You may have heard of the Potemkin Steps in Odesa, connecting the heart of the city to the harbor, which was a short walk from our hotel. Unfortunately, there is currently a Ukrainian military checkpoint at the top, and another military checkpoint at the bottom, with barbed wire running across the steps in the middle. I attempted to walk by the steps on the street at the bottom, and once I got close, a polite and professional but very, very serious Ukrainian soldier carrying a rifle approached me and informed me that the road that I had just walked down was for vehicle traffic only, and off-limits to pedestrians. He checked my passport and told me to go back the way I came. A sign indicating the street was off-limits to pedestrians probably would have been helpful, gentlemen.
In light of all that, I cannot recommend that you visit the Potemkin Steps until further notice.
We were in Odesa to meet with Oliksey Goncharenko, a member of the Ukrainian parliament and part of the Ukrainian delegation to the Council of Europe. He’s also the founder of the Goncharenko Centers, a network of educational and cultural centers established to provide English lessons, financial literacy, job training, and other other services to Ukrainians. The organization, which started in 2020, is putting in a lot of work to help the war effort. It now comprises many volunteers and 27 centers spread across the country.
When we arrive, a few members of the Ukrainian military are making a visit and have brought a type of weapon that looks like a space-age gun out of a Rob Liefeld comic illustration. This is the KVS G-6, developed by the Ukrainian company Kvertus Technology. The weapon uses an electronic pulse to disrupt the signals between a surveillance drone and its controller. When the signal between the controller and drone is disrupted, the drone drops to the ground — usually intact, and useful for collecting intelligence. (I was told this type of disruption would not work on an attack drone.) The weapons cost roughly $17,000 each, and the Goncharenko Centers have paid for 24 of them to put them in the hands of Ukrainian soldiers.
The grandmothers are enthralled, and take turns holding the electronic-disruption weapon, posing with it and taking pictures. Coming soon from Marvel Comics, Babushka Strike Force:
You would be amazed at what the Ukrainian military is obtaining through unconventional sources and financing. Goncharenko tells us how, last autumn, he crowdsourced the raising of 10 million hryvnyas, or about $270,000, within two weeks to purchase a self-propelled howitzer from a Czech dealer. The mobile howitzer met the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ requirements and is now being used by Ukraine’s Ivan Bohun 1st Brigade. (I know what you’re thinking, and I asked: No, ordinary civilians cannot purchase a mobile howitzer to make their morning commutes more fun.)
One of the big projects of the Goncharenko centers is producing camouflage netting, or as my hosts translate it into English, “masked nets.” The volunteers consult with the Ukrainian military about what kinds of netting are needed and what colors or patterns are needed to blend in with a particular area. The organization has made more than 2,000 “masked nets,” adding up to enough to cover about 50,000 square meters.
We were invited into a room full of Odessa grandmothers sitting around a table, cutting fabric into long strands. Then another group of volunteers tied the strands through the netting in the desired pattern.
Goncharenko told me that the oldest volunteer is 87 years old. While we’re chatting, another woman, in at least her 70s, pops her head into the office and says hello. Goncharenko said she has volunteered every day since the war started. A lot of Ukrainians feel helpless at times, with bombs falling from the sky and so much senseless death and destruction befalling their country. Having something to do — and other people to do it with — is needed for morale and finding the strength to carry on through this most difficult of times.
Goncharenko told me that in the first weeks of the war, he was in Hostomel — the site of that early, decisive battle for control of the airport. The Russians had been driven out by other units, and the civilians who’d hid in their basements and endured weeks of occupation were just starting to come out of their homes. An elderly couple came out of a house, crying, and told him he had to stay. He said he and his unit had orders to move to a different area, but the elderly couple was insistent that they needed to show him something. Two Ukrainian civilians had been killed in front of their house, and the frail, elderly couple — he estimated the husband was about 80, and the wife was about 75 — had somehow mustered the strength to pull the bodies into their backyard in the middle of the night and bury them. The bodies were exhumed and given a proper burial.
Goncharenko was sharp and witty as he described all kinds of problems and difficulties with serving in parliament, representing Ukraine in the Council of Europe, and running volunteer organizations during on ongoing full-scale war. Asked about the state of the war, he acknowledged the challenges facing the Ukrainian counter-offensive and dryly quipped, “We probably won’t be needing our bikinis to swim in Crimea this year.” He made an offhand reference to “when the Moskva became a submarine.” The Moskva was the flagship of the Russian Navy’s Black Sea Fleet, which sank in April 2022. Ukrainian officials stated that their forces damaged the ship with two anti-ship missiles, causing a fire and ultimately sinking it.
Goncharenko is a member of Ukraine’s European Solidarity party; Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky was the founder of Ukraine’s Servant of the People party. Goncharenko laid out that there are legitimate criticisms to be made of Zelensky; those just aren’t the criticisms you’re hearing when Tucker Carlson calls him a “pimp,” Ted Nugent calls him a “homosexual weirdo,” and he’s demonized as some sort of globalist warmonger. Goncharenko didn’t want to be misconstrued; he thinks Zelensky has done a great job as commander in chief since February 24, 2022, and he credited the president for being an effective voice for Ukraine on the world stage.
But Ukraine is under martial law — recall the midnight-to-5 a.m. curfew discussed earlier in this series — and Goncharenko wants to see the Ukrainian government being as open as it can be given the constrains of wartime. He would like to see the legislature’s sessions televised live again. He pointed out that appearances by members of the opposition parties on Ukrainian state television are few and far between. Goncharenko said he was invited for an interview with Ukrainian state television, and the interview itself went well. But when it didn’t air for two days — keep in mind, the interview had been about current events — he called the channel and asked when it would air. He was told another two days; two days passed, and it still didn’t air. He called a second time, and then the interview did air — at four o’clock in the morning. State television hasn’t completely banned members of the opposition parties from appearing, but it isn’t really giving them a fair shake, either.
Goncharenko was not that bothered by the fact that Ukraine’s elections are suspended indefinitely under the country’s current martial-law status. Ukraine’s constitution is clear: No elections can be held and the constitution cannot be altered while the country is under martial law. If Ukraine were not at war, there would be parliamentary elections in October, presidential elections next spring, and local elections in autumn 2025. Goncharenko agreed that a country with a significant chunk of its legitimate territory occupied by the Russian army, roughly 600,000 citizens playing roles in an active shooting war, and cities regularly under Russian air attacks cannot safely hold fair and legitimate elections.
He also pointed out that if an election were held today, Zelensky would almost certainly be reelected in a landslide; in February, 90 percent of Ukrainians said they approved of the job he was doing. Obviously, an opposition party isn’t really looking for that outcome, either. Goncharenko envisions national elections taking place about six months after the end of hostilities.
This doesn’t prove that Ukraine is a dictatorship, but it does indicate that Ukraine is experiencing inevitable friction from trying to remain a unified country at war and a pluralist democracy with dissent and debate at the same time.
Another volunteer, Sabina Nikitenko, took us to another Goncharenko Center in a different part of Odesa, one that specialized in providing services for refugees who have fled the war-torn parts of Ukraine.
Readers, I suspect you have found it emotionally challenging to read accounts of people describing the loss of their loved ones, their homes, and sometimes everything they have, day after day. I can assure you, it is emotionally intense to sit or stand, face to face, and hear their stories in person. We can only imagine how difficult it was to have lived those horrific experiences and endure those losses.
This war is generating a lot of refugees, and many of those refugees are children.
In this Goncharenko Center, one room was home to about a dozen children getting animal therapy by playing with about a dozen bunnies. The room was every kind of delightful chaos — kids chasing the rabbits, petting the rabbits, holding the rabbits, and occasionally being encouraged to play more gently with the rabbits. The kids were having the time of their lives. The rabbits, maybe a little less so:
I met Tatiana, a single mom who came to Odesa one year ago from a small village near Donetsk, with a 16-year-old son, a six-year-old daughter, one suitcase, and a pit bull that they could not leave behind. (I asked if the children’s father was still around, and she answered, “alone,” without elaborating.) She had to restart her life in Odesa and is now working as an instructor at a massage-therapy school. Her son is now in an online school, and her daughter comes to this Goncharenko Center for animal therapy and art therapy. Tatiana said her daughter had experienced nightmares since the beginning of the war, and still says she wants to go back to their old home, but her mood has improved, and she no longer feels the need to sleep in the same room as her mother. She described her teenage son’s mood shifts, and we joked around about the universal challenges of raising teenagers.
Tatiana spoke some English, and Sabina helped translate when she didn’t know the right words.
I asked Tatiana what she wanted Americans to know. She answered in English, “Ukraine is my home. Ukraine my home, my heart, my soul.” She switched to Ukrainian, and Sabina translated, “She never wants to have to move to another country. Moving to another country would be too stressful for the children.” She added that she felt like she now has put down roots in Odesa, and intends to stay here, even after the war ends.
That is what this past week has been for me: being introduced to some of the most extraordinary and delightful people you’ll ever meet, and then learning about how they somehow survived going through hell.
ADDENDUM: One last time for the conspiracy theorists out there. National Review did not make me go out to Ukraine, and neither did the Washington Post. The Ukrainian government did not invite me, although as you’ve seen in this series, several government officials have been willing to be interviewed by me. A friend of mine (and a longtime friend of National Review) has regularly been making trips to help with relief efforts since the war started. A few months ago, he told me I should come to Ukraine and see it with my own eyes, and after some hemming and hawing on my part, and a lot of planning and adjusting the plan and readjusting the plan, this trip became reality. We have no government minders, and no one has told me what to write or not to write, other than the location of the anti-drone station.
There is no secret meaning behind my trip out here. It is not a sign of Ukrainian desperation, nor a sign of Ukrainian confidence. I know you’re thrown that a guy who usually covers U.S. politics is hanging around in a country at war, but before 2020, I also hadn’t ever researched Chinese state-run laboratories and highly contagious bat viruses, and you probably remember how that turned out pretty well. (And if you trusted my reporting, research, and analysis then, I can’t see a good reason to not trust me now!) I think it’s really healthy to go and try to learn more about the world, see it with your own eyes, and talk to people to hear it in their own words.
As for the reader who wanted to know which international businessman was publicly pro-Ukraine but secretly helping the Iranians smuggle drone parts . . . well, if I told you his name, then he would know for certain that the Ukrainians are on to him, now, wouldn’t he?
And as for the reader who was bothered that I hadn’t crossed over to the Russian side of the line and interviewed the Russian soldiers who served in Bucha to get their side of the story about the massacre of civilians . . . do you guys just sit around and try to think up new and innovative ways to get me imprisoned or killed?