The sinister animal had disappeared from French beaches after the end of the Second World War. The “Czech hedgehog”, this anti-tank obstacle made up of three metal bars riveted to each other, has invaded the streets of Odessa in recent days. Until now spared by the bombs, the biggest port of Ukraine expects to undergo soon an offensive of the Russian army. As local media report, the city is actively preparing for war. Behind the filtering dams, the volunteers have taken up arms and are learning how to handle them, while the inhabitants are multiplying Molotov cocktails and sandbags to defend themselves.
Nicknamed the “Pearl of the Black Sea”, Odessa can contemplate the coming weeks with anguish: its fall is a major objective of Vladimir Putin and would constitute a turning point in the invasion which began on February 24. “It is the 3rd city in the country and it is above all its last port, because the other infrastructures of this type are no longer usable by Ukrainians”, recalls François Heisbourg, special adviser to the Foundation for Strategic Research (FRS) .
The loss would be all the more dramatic for the Ukrainian economy since Odessa represented, before Moscow’s offensive, three quarters of its port traffic, both an exit point for the export of cereals and steel and entry point for resources as indispensable as oil. “His seizure, with that of Mariupol, currently besieged, should allow the Russians to stifle Ukraine, underlines General Dominique Trinquand, military expert. Ukraine would no longer have access to the Sea of Azov and to the sea Black.”
An objective as strategic as it is symbolic
The authorities would only have land outlets, to the west. And again, these would be reduced to the Polish, Slovak, Hungarian and – partly – Romanian borders. Because the conquest of Odessa Oblast would allow the Kremlin to make the connection with the secessionist Moldavian territory of Transnistria, where there is a Russian base, and thus easily reach the Danube delta. What facilitate the capture of the center of the country: “In Odessa, Putin would be far beyond the Dnieper (river which separates the country in two) and could draw a line to Kiev”, underlines Olivier Kempf, director of the cabinet of La Vigie strategy.
The capture of Odessa would also have considerable symbolic significance. First, because it was founded in 1794 by Empress Catherine II and has since been considered one of the major Slavic cultural places with its preserved architecture and cosmopolitan past. Then, because she is mostly Russian-speaking and has long been presented as Russian by Vladimir Putin. In the spring of 2014, he said that it was not historically part of Ukraine, but of “Novorossia” (New Russia), in the same way as Donbass.
The city had then been the scene of a separatist thrust supported by the Kremlin, as in Donetsk and Lugansk. Clashes had taken place in town between Ukrainian nationalists and pro-Russian militants and about forty of them had perished in the fire of a building. An event that marked the end of secessionist desires, but that the Russian president continues to denounce. “The criminals who committed this evil act have not been punished, he said again last month. No one is looking for them, but we know them by name.”
Not sure, however, that the Kremlin can count on many supporters in Odessa, after eight years of a war in the Donbass which has reinforced Ukrainian nationalism. While defending a rapprochement with Moscow when he took office in May 2014, the current mayor, Gennady Troukhanov, now presents himself as a determined defender of his city in the face of the Russian advance. “I will stay until the end,” he said again on Tuesday in an interview on France 24. He said he feared that the attack on the city could simultaneously come from the sea, with a landing by amphibious vehicles, and from several land routes, with the possible mobilization of Russian troops in Transnistria.
Will Odessa be able to resist? “Everything will depend on the means that the Russian army will put in; if the effort is important, it will not be able to do so”, considers General Trinquand. For his part, Gustav Gressel, Russian defense specialist for the ECFR, notes that “the Russian army is currently advancing much faster in southern Ukraine than on other fronts”, but that “it is difficult whether it can position itself quickly in front of Odessa, because it is still possible that it will be pushed back.” 130 kilometers to the east, fighting raged on Tuesday, March 8, in Mikolaiv, a city of half a million inhabitants. The last lock before Odessa.
Clement Daniez, with Paul Véronique