Translated by Ollie Richardson & Angelina Siard

01:03:11
17/11/2016

Yury Selivanov

In the case of Odessa, Galicia swallowed a piece that she is not able to digest.

On the night of 15.11.16, an unknown person ripped the banner “Odessa is Ukraine!”, which was placed on the building next to the Odessa City Council.

This event, at first glance, is insignificant, but in reality it is highly symbolic. Especially if we regarded it not in isolation but in conjunction with other facts of a similar kind, which became for today’s Odessa an everyday reality.

Thus, for example, the day before the Odessa court refused to satisfy the claim of the kingpin of the local “Right Sector” branch that the statement “Odessa is a Russian city!” insulted his civil dignity. And the “dignity” of this scoundrel, the court evaluated as much as one hryvnia! It is exactly this sum that must be paid to the person who called a spade a spade, that is, Bandera’s thug – thug.

And also these days, by order of the Odessa City Council, Odessa’s famous monument was put in its original condition – an old cannon from the British frigate “Tiger” sunk near Odessa in the 19th century. During the cleaning of the monument’s wooden veneer with the words “Glory to the heroes of the ATO!”, under which re-emerged the pristine granite inscription – “Glory to Russian arms!”

All this seems to be just little things. But they are too revealing. And the self-proclaimed Kiev-Galician power just can’t do anything with this. Odessans, in their majority, removed this power out of the brackets of their lives, trying to live as if it does not exist at all.

Of course, this is not the best and most effective way of resistance to a factually foreign occupation. And inhabitants of Odessa are often criticized in an offensive way. Saying that they lost heart, didn’t argue strongly against the junta, as was done in Donbass, didn’t rise all together to fight and revolt.

But, firstly, this is factually not true. Because hundreds of Odessans with weapons in their hands in the ranks of Donbass militia are resisting the illegal regime. Thousands of others left their native city because of the complete impossibility of reconciliation with the occupation government. And to condemn them for this is the same as condemning Soviet people who left for evacuation to the East during the great Patriotic  from their captured-by-the-enemy cities. And about what “armed uprising” in Odessa could we speak of if the population had no units of modern military weapons, if we don’t consider as such their hunting rifles and traumatic pistols, which are under strict accounting by the authorities?

Those critics, who in this sense do not see any difference between Odessa and Donbass are either pretending or really don’t understand anything. Donbass militia, due to the open border with Russia, could receive weapons and necessary material assistance, a possibility that Odessa never had and is not there today.

In other words, it’s a completely different situation, in which it is possible to form a comparison precisely in order to understand how they differ.

But this external difference does not change the fact that the attitude towards the ruling-in-Kiev professional criminals, as in Donbass, as in Odessa, is exactly the same. And if it is manifested in different ways, it’s not because the mood of the people in the East of Ukraine is fundamentally different from attitudes in the South. This difference has a purely situational character. And situations, as is known, tend to change. That, in fact, is already happening.

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