Russian-born artist and designer Yulia Belomlinskaya and her daughter, Polina, were recently walking on the streets of the Ukrainian Black Sea port of Odesa when they were stopped by two women who had overheard them speaking Russian.
According to Belomlinskaya, one of the women said: "We want you to know that we love you. Don't think that we hate you."
Belomlinskaya recalls being stunned by such a declaration while Ukraine was waging a desperate defense against the Russian invasion and Odesa itself had been the target of daily air attacks for almost a week. She asked the women how they could feel this way when Russian President Vladimir Putin was raining bombs on their heads.
The woman responded by saying they certainly weren't talking about Putin, but about Russians in general. "We just want things to be good for you all as well," the woman said, according to Belomlinskaya.
"That phrase -- 'We want things to be good for you all as well' -- completely shook me," Belomlinskaya told RFE/RL. "These intelligent old women sincerely wanted Russia to be the same as Ukraine. They wanted us to heal our country and to have presidents both good and bad, but ones that changed every five years."
Odesa has periodically been targeted by Russian forces since Moscow's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. But since July 18, the city has endured nightly missile and drone attacks as Moscow has targeted Ukraine's capacity to export grain after abandoning a deal that had provided for the safe transport of grain across the Black Sea and out to world markets.
As of July 24, Ukrainian officials said at least 25 historic buildings in the city had been damaged or destroyed, including the Orthodox Transfiguration Cathedral.
Belomlinskaya has been writing about the attacks and the city's response to them on Facebook.
"After each explosion, the building shakes," she said in a video posted in the early hours of July 23. "And then there is silence again, but you know it won't last long. You think, what should I do now before more rockets start landing again?"
The women who stopped Belomlinskaya are quickly becoming exceptional in a place that was, before the Russian invasion, among the most Russian-friendly Ukrainian cities. It has been associated with Russian historical and cultural figures such as Catherine the Great, Leo Tolstoy, and Anna Akhmatova.
Belomlinskaya said that after she moved to Odesa in 2015, she searched in vain for the "Banderites" -- as Russian propagandists call far-right Ukrainian nationalists -- and "fascists."
"But I didn't find any," she said. "When I first moved here, all the signs were in Russian. I walked around amazed, wondering: Where was this 'Ukrainization' I'd heard about? And that is what I told my friends back in St. Petersburg: There are no Banderites here."
In a video posted on Telegram on July 23, Odesa Mayor Hennadiy Trukhanov, who was viewed as sympathetic to Russia in the past, slammed the latest attacks and emphasized how they had changed public opinion in his city.
"If only you knew how much Odesa hates you," he said after switching from Ukrainian to Russian to address the Russian public directly. "Not only hates but despises. You are fighting against small children, Orthodox churches…. You know us very poorly. You will not break us, but only make us angrier."
'We Are All Odesa Citizens'
Belomlinskaya -- a poet, costume designer, singer, and actress who describes herself as a "broadly gifted personality" -- was born in Leningrad, now St. Petersburg, in 1960. Her mother was a writer and her father an artist. In 1989, she moved with her parents to the United States. But she returned to Russia in 2001, publishing several books and performing as a singer.
Her family roots, however, reach back to southern Ukraine. Her great-grandfather on her mother's side was a gifted woodworker who was able to move from working on noble properties in the Odesa area to being invited to relocate to the imperial capital, St. Petersburg.
WATCH: Locals rushed to the Transfiguration Cathedral in the Ukrainian port city of Odesa to clear it from rubble after an overnight Russian missile attack on July 23. Odesa's largest Orthodox church was consecrated in 1809, destroyed by the Soviet authorities in 1939, and rebuilt in 2003. The city center is on the UNESCO World Heritage List.
"I first visited Odesa in 1982," Belomlinskaya said. "Odesa enchanted me. This city does not recognize any authorities and truly considers itself the navel of the world. You can't spit here without hitting a palace."
"Odesa is incomparable," she continued. "A city of dreams that has everything. Imagine St. Petersburg on the shores of the Black Sea."
In 2015, she moved permanently to Odesa.
When Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, eight years after it seized Crimea and fomented unrest across the east and south, sparking war in the Donbas, Belomlinskaya woke up in a frightening new world.
When her Russian friends wrote messages such as "Don't worry, we are coming for you," she would respond: "Go ahead! I will greet you with a Molotov cocktail. This is my home, and my home is being bombed."
Russia Hits Ukrainian Grain Store In Fourth Day Of Strikes On Odesa
Before the invasion, she said, she felt like a "writer from the north" in Odesa, "some sort of émigré writer like Tomas Mann."
Afterward, however, "I began to feel that we are all Odesa citizens," she added.
As for the language, she said all natives of Odesa are bilingual.
"The older generation prefers to communicate in Russian," she said, "but young people have chosen Ukrainian."
'They Need…For Everyone To Fear Them'
Belomlinskaya said there is no point in talking with those Russians who remain in Russia and back Putin's aggression – "It is just pain and madness," she said.
Her home country, she said, is ruled now by "the children of the Soviet nomenklatura," who cannot envision a democratic, federal country.
"They need a tsar sitting on the throne, followed by his son, and for everyone to fear them," she said.
There is no chance, she added, that Ukrainians in general or Odesa residents in particular will surrender themselves to such a vision of the future.
"And Putin, I think, knows this," she said. "That is why they are bombing us every night. Russia has taken up genocide because they want to kill all of us, to wipe us out. We are an unsuitable population for them."
"They want to purge the city and capture it empty," she continued. "That is the Russian idea now. They understand that there are no people here who are not full of hatred for them. That is what they have achieved over a year and a half."
