Putin is sabotaging Ukraine’s grain deal
To walk along the Odesa seafront is to briefly forget that you are in a country at war. Several times each day, the sounds of Russian attack start up, and soon after comes the Ukrainian retort. The alto of the air raid siren is now an almost inevitable precursor to the baritone of the air defence guns, booming reassuringly across the skies in answer.
The seafront, though, remains close to normal. The sky shines bright blue in the sharp cold, the beaches glisten a powdery off-white. But the idyll is upset by a strange stillness. The port, which made the city a global outpost, is almost closed. Providing the Russian Empire with access to Europe, and to the Mediterranean and Aegean Seas, it saw everything from silk to olives to cocaine flow back in return. It made the people here, if not exactly cosmopolitan, then perennially open to the world. And it enabled a lot of good times…
David Patriarakos for UnHerd.
