odesa under fire, march 11, 2025

We drove into Odesa beneath a heavy, twisting cloud of black smoke. Few hours prior, a russian drone struck a fuel depot a couple of kilometers from a popular shopping center. The burning fuel depot spews a toxic, oily breath over a city of a million people, more than one third of them children.

Odesa has been in putin’s crosshairs every day, with electricity stations, fuel depots and other civilian infrastructure exploding nightly. putin has a lot to celebrate these days: his renewed bromance with trump has resulted in the U.S. withdrawing delivery of its Patriot missile defense systems, leaving Ukrainians exponentially more vulnerable to ballistic missile and drone strikes.

Over three years of war, Ukrainians have developed a steadiness with which they brace against these relentless shocks. I would like to say that I am as steely, but I am no Ukrainian. I still jump when a missile hits; see below.

I write this post about 30 minutes after impact, from an underground shelter in our hotel. It used to be a wine cellar and true to form, wine is still available for those of us huddled here around a large, new table. Blink and you’ll still believe you’re in a swanky urban wine cellar: rough hewn stone curves overhead, with brickwork and large, pristine cement tiles below. The hotel’s cat is down here too, fussed over by the two teenage girls seen running last at the end of the video. Between checking in with their friends on the phones, they take turns snuggling and filming the cat. I would like to ask them about how they feel right now. I would like to ask them how they are handling this nightly barrage of terror. I would like to ask what it’s like to spend 3 years of their precious youth under a sky that tears open and reverberates with malevolent destruction. But such question seem banal, even predatory. So we sit here underground and try to gauge the right time to crawl back to street level, into the open. The right time, of course, is indeterminable. The odds of another missile striking nearby is neither increased nor diminished by how long you hide underground. It’s a russian roulette each time.

As I struggle to regain my full hearing after the blast and steady myself to overcome my shame of being an American, the moment passes. The girls get up, murmur their farewell to the cat, turn to me with a polite nod and say “have a good night,” in excellent English. I missed my chance to make a connection. Then again, perhaps we made it in our silence, each processing the last 20 minutes, each of us pretending the cat was the only thing to pay attention to. Stay safe, friends.