Odessa, pearl of the Black Sea and economic lung of Ukraine

The Russian-speaking Ukrainian city of Odessa (southwest), is the main port and vital for the economy of Ukraine. Located on the edge of the Black Sea, Odessa has a cosmopolitan population of one million people.

Cosmopolitan and symbol for Russia

Founded in 1794 by Empress Catherine II, Odessa, located 500 km south of the Ukrainian capital Kiev, is a very symbolic city for Russia. It was the third city of the Russian empire and its second port.

In April 2014, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that it was historically not part of Ukraine but part of the Novorossia (the New Russia) that he would like to reconstitute.

Prosperous, the city is cosmopolitan, and was populated successively by immigrants of all origins – Greeks, Turks, Bulgarians, Moldovans – after the opening of the Suez Canal (1869) and the development of the railway.

From 100,000 inhabitants in 1870, its population went from 400,000 in 1900 to 600,000 in 1913. Today, according to the UN, it has 993,800 people (in 2018, the latest figure available).

Until the 1940s, Odessa housed a very important Jewish community, decimated by massacres and deportations.

separatist impulses

Close to Transnistria, a pro-Russian secessionist region of Moldova, Odessa has managed – despite the divisions between supporters of Kiev and Moscow – to resist the separatist drives that generated an armed conflict (more than 14,000 deaths since 2014) in the regions eastern ukrainian rebels

However, it has gone through very tense periods in recent years.

On May 2, 2014, it was the scene of a tragedy that cost the lives of 48 people, mainly pro-Russians, who died in a fire after attacking and killing supporters of Kiev. The drama, commemorated every year by both sides, has left vivid traces.

Key port and seaside resort

The city hosts the main port (specializing in oil and ferrous metals). Two other major ports — Yujni (chemical) and Illychyivsk (metals and container traffic) — are located in the region.

It is one of the main transit points for grain exports, and its oil and chemical industries are linked by strategic pipelines to Russia and the European Union (EU).

Its sunny climate and its beaches have made it a popular resort for tourists, especially after the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014.

The “Battleship Potemkin” and crime

It was in Odessa that Sergei Eisenstein’s silent film masterpiece “The Battleship Potemkin” was made in 1925, inspired by one of the best-known episodes of the Russian revolution of 1905.

But at the same time the city has a tenacious reputation as a “crime capital”, which fluctuates between reality and legend.

But his reputation has been exported to the United States, where a New York neighborhood, a refuge for immigrants from the former USSR and considered the stronghold of the Russian mafia, has been baptized the “Little Odessa”.