[theold]

Why is Russia attacking Odessa now? One has to look at the historical struggle for the city and the history of Greater Russian imperialism to understand what Putin is about in this war.

In a brain obsessed with recapturing the empire, Odessa, the port city on the Black Sea with millions of inhabitants, must become the main target of the Russian troops alongside the Russian founding settlement of Kyiv, not only because of the immense importance of the port for supply and economy of the whole Ukraine. It is therefore not surprising that the threatened Odessa has been turning into a fortress for weeks, that armed resistance is now being organized again in the city's catacombs, where Jewish and Soviet partisans once hid - and that squadrons of Russian warships are taking the people of Odessa into fire on their unique ensemble of historical magnitude.

https://www.welt.de/kultur/plus237776635...toert.html