In the early hours of Tuesday morning I was at the receiving end of one of the deadly Russian mass drone attacks that regularly terrorise Ukrainian cities.
Much of my hotel near the centre of the Black Sea port city of Odesa was wrecked when Shahed drones hit close by, setting buildings opposite ablaze and blowing out walls, shattering windows and collapsing ceilings where I was staying.
I had slept through the sirens warning of an approaching attack and was wrenched out of my slumber by the first enormous explosion, which blew out windows in my room in the Hotel Alarus at around 2.20am.
As I hurriedly pulled on clothes and boots, drones came diving in on their final approach, emitting a shrill, otherworldly scream like that of German Stuka dive bombers in movies about the Second World War.
Twice I hit the floor in the space between my bed and the bathroom wall – the furthest point in my room from the outside.
During these seconds that seemed like an age, I felt utterly helpless and mouthed: “F***, f***, f***! Just get it over with.”
As more drones kept coming, I got to the basement shelter and joined 11 staff and guests there in the dark.
People, some in nighties, some barefoot, mostly sat silently with a few faces dimly lit by screens as they scanned smartphones for any news.
Locals had an app showing the approach of missiles or drones around Odesa. Some cried while others covered their ears or pulled friends close as tension mounted, waiting for an explosion.
Some of the explosions blew out the hotel’s glass front doors and seemed to search us out, sending showers of broken glass down the basement stairs.
Nobody at the hotel was injured but early reports said at least 23 people, including some kids and a pregnant woman, were hurt in the raid. At least one victim is very badly injured, and rescue workers are searching for bodies under rubble.
This is the reality in Ukraine, as peace talks grind on interminably, with little sense of progress.
In everyday life in Odesa, dilapidated generators thrum outside shops, restaurants, residential and office buildings as they fight a losing battle against power cuts and freezing temperatures on the snow- and ice-covered streets.
Some sounds have disappeared completely from Odesa’s urban soundtrack – the building-shaking trundle of trams along the tracks that lace the city’s boulevards, and the trolleybuses, whose power-transmitting poles once caused magnificent showers of sparks where they connect to icy electric cables high above the streets, providing delight for kids.
Intensified Russian aerial strikes over recent months have knocked out much of the region’s energy-generating infrastructure, forcing these electricity-sucking trams and trolleybuses to a halt.
Many Odesa residents have moved away from the city as it has become a priority target for Moscow. The population, at around a million, remains at pre-war levels because those moving out have been replaced by refugees fleeing the fighting further east.
Vera, 23, a student, lives in an apartment block in the northeastern suburb of the city; these highrise buildings suffer some of the harshest treatment because of aerial attacks and power cuts.
She said these cuts, sometimes lasting five days, mean many people, especially the elderly, handicapped and people with young children, face catastrophic conditions.
“Imagine having to descend or ascend to the 14th floor of an apartment block – 28 flights of stairs – if you’re frail or handicapped. Imagine a mother carrying her child and a baby buggy. What if she has two children? If you’re in a wheelchair, you’re trapped.
“On this New Year’s Eve, six people, including three children, were injured when drones hit apartment blocks close to us. On New Year’s Eve 2024, drones killed a friend of mine who was on a balcony in our building having a cigarette. Perhaps the Russians are starting a tradition.”
The huge power outages caused by the savage uptick in Russian aerial attacks have coincided with Ukraine’s coldest winter in years, as the country suffers through sub-zero temperatures.
Many of Ukraine’s Soviet-era residential highrises rely on an archaic and inefficient form of central heating where hot water is piped in from a plant miles away. When one of the water plants is destroyed, thousands of homes quickly freeze. With electricity knocked out for days at a time, electric heaters become useless.
The Russians have been targeting Ukrainian energy infrastructure since the start of the full-blown war, and options for replacement equipment have been severely limited. Many electrical engineers repairing damage have been killed in targeted drone attacks.
The front lines start about 60 miles to the east of Odesa, but, according to military spokesperson Major Dmytro Pletenchuk, the Russians can launch missiles and drones from submarines in the Black Sea off Odesa or Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula which their forces occupy some 100 miles from the city.
“They use ballistic missiles which travel so fast they arrive before people can react to the sirens and find shelter,” he said.
He said the one principal aim was to cripple the three ports – in the city centre and two, Chornomorsk and Pivdennyi, nearby along the coast – which collectively form Ukraine’s most important remaining opening for sea trade.
“These ports are the main outlet for Ukraine’s agricultural exports, including grains and sunflower oil, which are critical foodstuffs for many third-world countries. The drones target storage containers and convoys of trucks bringing cargo to the ports from producers all over Ukraine,” said Maj Pletenchuk. “Recently they hit a container with tens of thousands of litres of sunflower oil, which drained into the sea and can cause as much ecological damage as if it was fuel oil.”
The ports are one of the city’s main employers. It is also an important industrial, business, IT and academic centre, including scientific research, chemical manufacturing, and machine-building.
Maj Pletenchuk said another intention is to demoralise and sow terror among the civilian population by striking energy infrastructure and targeting residential buildings, leaving people frozen in the dark.
A doctor, whose first name is Svyatoslav but who preferred not to have his surname published, is a senior member of the World Health Organisation team in southern Ukraine.
He called the Russian attacks that keep millions of Ukrainians freezing “pure terrorism”. “They are not hitting the military but are striking at targets to make normal life impossible for ordinary people.”
“This terror is meant to bring people to their knees. They think Ukrainians will plead with their government to end the war at any price; for us to surrender. Before 2022, I knew a lot of people in Odesa who didn’t think of Russia as their enemy. Now I think very few like that remain. We have no choice but to fight on.
The Ukrainian people’s willingness to help each other is an essential component of the country’s drive to keep going.
Odesa, similarly to other large cities, has a network of dozens of Punkt Nezlamonist – “Points of Unbroken Resilience” – providing a place to warm up, have a warm drink and a meal, recharge cellphones, computers and gadgets, and find a place to talk to someone.
Some facilities provide help for just some needs – many supermarkets have gadget charging points, places to warm up or air raid shelters.
A year ago, many people interviewed in the eastern Ukrainian frontline town of Kupyansk believed that the newly inaugurated US president Donald Trump might be able to deliver on his promise to quickly end the war.
But nobody The Independent spoke to had any faith that the Trump-brokered peace talks, which last week brought Ukrainian, US and Russian delegations to the UAE, would yield a fair peace or any peace at all. After the first day of talks last Friday, Russia launched a massive aerial attack against cities across Ukraine.
A volunteer named Roman asked: “What kind of a peace agreement can you expect from Russia when, on the night of the first day’s talks, they send 400 drones and missiles to kill us?”
Vera, the student, said: “Trump doesn’t feel human emotions, he doesn’t care about Ukrainians – it’s all about greed and business to him.”
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