Marking one year of Russia's war with Ukraine, we crossed the border from Moldova into Ukraine. We visited Odesa, the once-booming tourist city on the Black Sea's coast that is now a dark and gloomy ghost city. We also visited the overcrowded and desperate city of Mykolaiv. We met with aid organizations, Jews who stayed behind, Holocaust survivors who went back in time 80 years, women whose husbands are fighting on the front lines, and children attending school via Zoom.
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All spoke of challenging conditions, frequent power outages, difficulty heating water in the winter, empty store shelves, and a lack of water and medicine. However, one bright light shone amidst all this darkness: an International Fellowship of Christians and Jews plane flying 90 new immigrants to Israel. The excitement and the happiness over landing in Israel allowed them to forget for a moment what they had left behind.
"I have all the answers to the question, but I can't jeopardize the improvement of Ukraine–Israel relations", says @ZelenskyyUa to i24NEWS @P_Klochendler's question on if alleged Israeli strikes in #Iran and other steps Israel is taking are helpful to Ukraine pic.twitter.com/20gVyGSDlZ
— i24NEWS English (@i24NEWS_EN) February 24, 2023
Odesa is now devoid of tourists. Many shops are closed, and instead of tourists filling the city's famous sites, soldiers occupy them. The traffic lights are out in most areas of the city, the streetlights are out, drivers cross intersections unchecked, and the few people walking around outside endanger themselves whenever they step on a crosswalk. A few restaurants are open and full, serving as a bubble of pure escapism. During the day, you can still see the remnants of the city's beauty that made it popular, but at night, when it is already dark at 4 pm, it is extremely difficult to imagine that this city once had vibrant nightlife. The city enters curfew at 11 pm.
The shattered dreams
Anna Drinko does not have the privilege of drowning herself in escapism in her small, dark apartment where she lives with her two children, Dasha and Ewan. They had a 24-hour-long power outage just a day ago. She is now taking advantage of having electricity for who knows how long to do the laundry and charge cell phones.
Her husband, Alexei, enlisted in the Ukrainian army when the war broke out. Since then, Anna has put all her dreams and plans for the future on hold. They once dreamt of traveling the world. Today, the wallpaper on her apartment walls depicting famous cities is the only evidence of their shattered dreams. The last time they saw each other was when he surprised her and came home for Christmas. "I miss him very much. The children do too. All I want is for him to come home already, healthy and in one piece," she said.
The family receives aid in the form of food packages. Her family is not the only one. Every month, Chabad, with the help of the Fellowship of Christians and Jews, distributes 5,000-7,000 food packages to the Odesa Jews. When the war broke out, the Fellowship raised about 30 million dollars and established emergency hotlines with the cooperation of local aid organizations such as Chabad and The Joint.
These organizations provided aid by extracting Jews from the Ukrainian border and providing food, medicine, clothing and blankets, sleeping bags, heating equipment, and shelter for the refugees. Simultaneously, the Fellowship worked with Nativ, the Jewish Agency, and the Aliyah and Integration Ministry to transport about 5,000 new immigrants from Ukraine to Israel via Moldova.
About 250 Holocaust survivors in the Chabad synagogue await food packages. Among them is a man that was told a day earlier that his grandson was killed in action. His eyes were tired. He is hunched over and does not want to leave his house but has to eat to survive. Rabbi Avraham Wolff, chief rabbi of Odesa, helps him put the food he received into a bag he brought. The rabbi hugs him, and the man cries. So does Rabbi Wolff.
84-year-old Yelena, a known theatre actor in Odesa, tells us: "We were killed in World War II because we were Jews. Now we are being killed because we are Ukrainian. My generation's life began with a war, and its end is also with one."
The heavy price
Hundreds of supply trucks stand on the side of the long road to Mykolaiv, south of Kyiv. The city served as a buffer in the Russian's effort to reach Odesa to control access to the Black Sea – and the city paid a heavy price for it. Houses were bombed, including government symbols such as the seat of the local government and a local university, and many were killed. Infrastructure was also ruined; no water comes out of the tap in most of the city, and the city's residents fill up water bottles daily at distribution points.
But the Russians are no longer there. They continued south, and the Ukrainians marked the battle in this area as a victory. In the ruins of one of the houses burned due to a bombing, we met 82-year-old Galina Petrova Mironenko. The bombing killed her neighbor, but she managed to flee in time. Charred possessions, pictures, and books remained in the house's ruins, testimony to the life this place once had. Over the last year, about 1500 Jews were rescued from Mykolaiv, and several immigrated to Israel. Today, about 4,000 Jews live in the city who also receive aid. Schools teach online only, which rarely happens because of the many power outages. Despair is spreading in Mykolaiv, and the war's end is nowhere on the horizon, but the support of the struggle against Russia has not stopped. "We believe in the struggle and its righteousness," said one of the residents.
The happy ending
In a hotel in Chișinău, Moldova, on the evening of the special flight to Israel, the immigrants are excited – tomorrow, they will be in Israel.
Lev, 76 years old, will meet his wife, whom he has not seen in almost a year, and his daughter and grandchildren. 22-year-old Katharina will meet her parents, who made Aliyah to Israel before the war. 63-year-old Yelena from Kyiv will meet her grandchildren. She cries when remembering the friends that she lost. Everyone almost completely stopped speaking in Russian and reverted to speaking Ukrainian. "Russian is the language of war," Katharina explains. Tomorrow they will board the plane. The flight is short, three hours, but when the aircraft approaches landing, they look outside, and the excitement is at its peak. For most of them, it is their first time in Israel. They left a snowy land behind them, and the sights here are so different. When the plane touches down, they all burst out in applause and singing, wiping the tears from their faces. Now, they are safe.
The writer was a guest of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews.
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