Amid the Bombs, Ukrainians Rediscover the Beach
Threats of ballistic missiles, drones and sea mines might ordinarily be enough to put holidaymakers off their buckets and spades. But nothing is so simple in Odessa, Ukraine’s good-time resort on the Black Sea. Two and a half years into war, its beaches are alive again with speedos, silicone and grandmothers selling shrimps and corn on the cob. Demand is so great that trains and hotels are sold out weeks in advance. Prices for the most expensive rooms at the prestigious Lanzheron beach have shot up to $1,000 a day.
Observing the rows of bronzing bodies from a rocky hill above the beach is Valentin Zakharchenko, a 74-year-old artist. He squats and squints in the sunlight, and makes tiny adjustments to the placement of his easel. What brings him here, he says, is a search for answers. He is not so interested in the sea—that is merely the background to his unfinished portrait of a young man sunbathing on the shore. No, he is much more interested in watching the seemingly relaxed people. “Don’t be fooled,” he says. “The state of war is present in everyone’s soul right now.”
Fazil Askerov, a hotel entrepreneur at Nemo, a five-star resort, acknowledges the oddity of beaches full of bathers just a few hundred metres from Odessa’s heavily bombed port infrastructure. The city’s tourism chiefs reckon this year’s season is already about three times as busy as that of 2023. Back then beach life was hampered by Russia’s demolishing of the Kakhovka dam in the nearby Kherson region in June (which led to an ecological catastrophe). Ukraine’s ban on military-age males leaving the country has left few holiday alternatives for millions of Ukrainian families, Mr Askerov says. Odessa does not need many of them to fill its roughly 17,000 hotel beds.
Creative real-estate agents have taken to marketing apartment rentals by saying they are on the “non-drone-facing” side of town. No one is quite sure what this means; it may be a bit of dark Odessan humour. In any case, all of Nemo’s glass-fronted penthouses, which are on the vulnerable seafront, are booked for the foreseeable future.
This year, authorities gave in to pressure to open for swimming early, and began clearing mines from city beaches as early as April. But that does not mean the beaches are entirely safe, says Captain Dmytro Pletenchuk, a spokesman for the navy. Russian missiles often miss their targets, he says, and storms wash mines towards the shore. Last year, there were several explosions causing injuries and deaths. “If you encounter the mine when you are in the water, you are a goner. The probability is low, but it’s real.”
The tourists largely ignore the war’s inconveniences. Few head to air-raid shelters during alerts, which can sound several times a day. Not every beach has shelters close enough to run to within the three minutes of warning before a ballistic missile lands. “People say they don’t care if it’s just a ballistic missile,” says Sasha, a taxi driver stuck in a jam snaking up the hill from Lanzheron beach to the city centre. “What worries them more are the Shahed drones, which have a more unpredictable trajectory.” For whatever reason, Russia has not sent many of its kamikaze drones in the last two months. But that is no reason for complacency, thinks Sasha: “My guess is that they are modernising drone stocks with jet engines.”
Idle speculation? Not necessarily. With a smile, Sasha produces a military pass: he is a serving air-defence officer. Driving a cab is a side job: “I’m usually on the monitors with the mobile air-defence groups,” he says. His military salary is just 34,000 hryvnia ($830) a month. The government used to pay soldiers more, but it is strapped for cash. “You can’t be sure of your future here. But I tell my wife, there’s no point in getting depressed. If you do, you’ll never see the way out.”
Back in his cluttered fourth-floor studio in Odessa’s House of Artists, stacked with hundreds of canvases, Mr Zakharchenko says his unfinished painting might be an allegory of the city’s future. He is not sure how it will turn out. Maybe there will be a tragedy. Maybe not. He marks a line across the paradisiacal blue sky above the young male sunbather. “See, the line could be a crane, flying lyrically, beautifully, away over the horizon,” he muses. “Or it might be something quite different.”
