The choke-point city that’s key to Putin’s sinister imperial plans

Résumé détaillé

Known as the pearl of the Black Sea, the port city of Odesa has been a key target for Russia since the first days of its full-scale invasion. For Vladimir Putin, however, Odesa…

This summer, as it floundered on the battlefield, Russia pivoted to a crushing new strategy: strangling Ukraine via one of its most strategic cities.

Known as the pearl of the Black Sea, the port city of Odesa has been a key target for Russia since the first days of its full-scale invasion. For Vladimir Putin, however, Odesa represents far more than just an economic target.

The traditionally Russian-facing city on Ukraine’s Black Sea coast is one of the showpieces in Putin’s imperialist fantasy of Novorossiya, or New Russia. Odesa, the Russian President declared in 2024, “is a Russian city”.

For years, Odesa escaped the worst of Moscow’s brutalities. But it now faces a bleak new reality, suffering under a de facto blockade while also being hit by drones and missiles. Putin hopes to bring not just the city to its knees, but the whole of the country.

Choking off Odesa, the third-largest city in Ukraine before the war, is seen as crucial as Russia aims to cripple the country’s maritime trade and crush it economically.

Odesa is the most important port still under Ukrainian control and is “one of the major outlets for Ukrainian exports and an important source of economic revenue for Ukraine’s wartime economy,” said Luke Coffey, a foreign policy expert and senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. “This is one reason why Russia has paid particular attention to the city.”

The vast majority of Ukraine’s commodity exports are transported by sea, according to the Council on Geostrategy, including 70 per cent of all the grain it produces. Black Sea ports handle 90 per cent of grain exports, with Odesa the main one.

“Odesa is crucial for Ukraine both from an economic point of view and as a symbol of Ukraine’s continuing existence as a maritime nation,” said Basil Germond, the chair of international security at Lancaster University. “Its survival defies Russia’s attempt to reduce Ukraine to a landlocked country.”

While a July 2022 deal that Russia was part of enabled grain exports…

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