‘Without ports, Ukraine will be destroyed’:
Odesa buckles under Russian bombs
By AFP
February 27, 2026
Odesa is a key logistics hub for Ukraine, one of the world's top agricultural exporters - Copyright AFP Oleksandr GIMANOV
Cecile FEUILLATRE
Looking out at the blue and yellow cranes towering over the Black Sea horizon, Viktor Berestenko worries about the relentless Russian bombardment of Odesa, Ukraine’s southern port city.
“It’s war, every night,” the head of the Inter Trans logistics company told AFP.
The main gateway to the Black Sea and beyond, Odesa is a key logistics hub for Ukraine, one of the world’s top agricultural exporters.
Russia has intensified its attacks on the region — tripling the number of missile and drone strikes over the last year in what officials call an attempt to cut Ukraine off from the sea.
“Without ports, Ukraine will be destroyed,” said Berestenko.
The escalation comes four years into Russia’s invasion, in which Ukraine’s maritime infrastructure has been a target for Moscow.
The attacks are accepted as part of daily life for the city of around one million people, dotted with ornate 19th-century architecture and where luxury cars pass mobile air defence units along the bustling seaside.
Russia’s army occupies much of Ukraine’s southern coast, including key port cities of Mariupol and Berdiansk further to the east.
And in 2023 Moscow walked away from a deal, brokered by the UN and Turkey, that facilitated the safe passage of Ukrainian agricultural exports across the Black Sea.
In response, Kyiv set up an alternative route with vessels hugging the sea’s western coastline from Odesa, along Romania, Bulgaria and through the Bosphorus into the Mediterranean.
Ukraine touts it as a success, with more than 170 million tonnes of cargo transported through the route, including grain to some 55 countries, mostly in Africa.
The sales provide a vital source of income for the economy, decimated by the Russian invasion.
But the surge in strikes is taking a toll.
Volumes were down 15 percent last year, when some 57 ships and 336 pieces of port equipment were damaged, according to Mykola Kravchuk, head of the state-run Ukrainian Sea Ports Authority in the city.
There were more than 800 air raid alerts in Odesa in 2025 — “this amounts to more than a month of operational time lost over the course of the year,” Kravchuk told AFP.
The vast majority of Ukraine’s grain exports go through Odesa.
– Two-minute warning –
Incoming ballistic missiles can hit Odesa within two minutes of being launched from Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014.
It takes some 45 seconds for a crane operator to climb down, let alone reach a shelter, Berestenko said.
He scrolled through photos on his phone of burned-out trucks and warehouses damaged by strikes.
“It’s scary, to put it briefly,” said Iryna, who works at the port’s container terminal.
“When the alarm sounds, we go down… we put our trust in God,” the 41-year-old said.
“Sometimes alerts can last for three hours, and we sit there.”
Several strikes have killed port employees or ship crew members.
In December, a ballistic missile attack killed eight people.
The strikes also have an environmental toll. Last year an attack on the nearby port of Pivdennyi hit a sunflower oil storage tank, polluting the Black Sea coast.
Thousands of birds and seahorses were killed as a result, ecologist Vladyslav Belinsky said.
Ukraine classifies its ports as strategically important infrastructure, limiting access to them.
Kravchuk said the port industry’s top two priorities are protecting people, “specifically our employees” and making sure the ports stay open.
After an overnight attack on Friday Deputy Prime Minister Oleksiy Kuleba repeated that the maritime corridor was still operational despite another massive attack on Ukraine’s port facilities.
But the surge in the attacks has many in the industry and the city on edge.
“What will be the next steps?” asked logistics chief Berestenko.
“To occupy Odesa? To cut Ukraine from the sea?”
Podcast: How activism is helping Ukrainians endure four years of full-scale war
A meeting in Kyiv marking the anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Hungary’s vetoes on financial aid to Ukraine, and the resilience of Ukrainians: after four years of conflict, the end of the war seems nowhere in sight.
There are moments in life that are hard to forget and remain etched in the collective memory of those who witnessed them: a natural disaster affecting our hometown, a terrorist attack in our country or the outbreak of a full-scale war.
“You can ask every Ukrainian — no matter where they were, in Ukraine or abroad — and they will remember moment by moment where they were and what they were doing the moment Russia started its full-scale invasion,” Euronews’ correspondent Sasha Vakulina told Brussels, My Love?.
Together with Marta Barandiy, founding president of Promote Ukraine and Katharina Emschermann, head of programme EU and international politics at Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung, Euronews' correspondent joined this week’s episode of the podcast to discuss the fourth anniversary of Russia’s war on Ukraine.
How are Ukrainians coping? Is the EU doing enough to support them?
The morale in Ukraine
Marta Barandiy founded her non-profit organisation Promote Ukraine in 2014, the year Russia annexed Ukraine's peninsula of Crimea. “The war started in 2014, let’s not forget that, the full-scale invasion started in 2022,” Barandiy said.
Over the years of Barandiy’s activism in Brussels, she witnessed how slowly things were moving toward providing support and maintaining attention to Ukraine. “I sort of imagined that (the war) could last so long,” she said.
Barandiy explained that Ukrainians are resisting by creating communities of veterans, of families of abducted children and abducted prisoners of war: “The whole of Ukraine is living in activism in order to help each other to cope with the situation and to not lose.”
The EU's role
On Tuesday, European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen, European Council President António Costa and some European leaders went to Kyiv to show their support for the country on the day of the anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion.
The meeting, however, came just one day after Hungary vetoed both a new package of sanctions against Russia and a €90 billion loan to Ukraine. “That undercut the message that European leaders wanted to send,” Emschermann said.
According to the expert, Hungary’s veto puts the EU before a broad question about how it makes decisions on security challenges, its efficiency, and its unity.
The loan had, in fact, been approved in December 2025 at the European Council after long negotiations among 27 heads of state and governments.
Also according to Vakulina, Hungary’s last-minute veto and the meeting in Kyiv are very representative of the EU challenges.
“The EU has done a lot,” she said, commenting on Brussels’ involvement in Ukraine.
“Even the EU itself wishes it could do more, but there are some hurdles, political issues, nuances, vetoes on some occasions, which is very frustrating not only for Ukraine but for the EU,” she said.
Listen to the podcast in the player above or wherever you get your podcasts.
Get in touch with us by writing to brusselsmylove@euronews.com.
‘It’s Not A War Crime If It Was Fun’: Three
Years Of Gory Messages By A Russian
General – Analysis
Major General Roman Demurchiev has served as commander of the 42nd Guards Motor Rifle Division, fighting in Ukraine. Photo Credit: RFE/RL
February 27, 2026
RFE RL
By Yelizaveta Surnacheva, Valeriya Yegoshyna, Kira Tolstyakova, Schemes and Systema
On October 18, 2022, roughly eight months after Russia launched its all-out war on Ukraine, a high-ranking Russian officer texted several messages to his wife, and several acquaintances, back home in Russia.
The officer, then-Colonel Roman Demurchiev, commander of the 42nd Guards Motor Rifle Division, bragged about how his soldiers had just stormed a “strongpoint” in Ukraine, and had captured four prisoners-of-war.
In a message to his wife, Aleksandra, he sent a photograph that appeared to be several human ears, blackened and hanging from a metal pipe.
“What do you do with them afterward?” Aleksandra wrote.
“I’ll make a garland and give it as a gift,” Demurchiev, who was promoted to major general the following year, responded.
“Like pig ears for beer,” she wrote.
“Yeah,” he replied.
The gory banter, and evidence of possible war crimes by a senior Russian military officer, are among the revelations contained in three years of communications — text and audio messages, photographs, videos — purportedly sent and received by Demurchiev.
The materials — dozens of messages and other related materials — were provided to reporters from Schemes, the investigative unit of RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service , by a person serving in the Ukrainian military. RFE/RL agreed not to disclose the person’s identity or how they obtained the files.
Schemes verified the authenticity of the communications, working with forensics laboratories in the United States and data researchers in Germany.
RFE/RL reporters also corroborated many of the dates and events listed in the data using details provided by soldiers from Ukraine’s Third Army Corps, whose units fought, and continue to fight, against soldiers under Demurchiev’s command.
Contacted by RFE/RL by phone, Demurchiev, 49, hung up upon being asked about the treatment of prisoners of war.
The Russian Defense Ministry did not respond to RFE/RL’s emails regarding its policies on treatment of prisoners of war.
‘You Didn’t Touch The Ears?’
Throughout Russia’s war on Ukraine, which hits its fourth anniversary on February 24, there have been widespread allegations of, and ample evidence pointing to, war crimes being committed by Russian units.
Among the best-known examples was from Bucha, a town north of the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, that was occupied by Russian forces for just over a month.
After the Russian troops withdrew, residents discovered dozens of dead bodies, overwhelmingly civilians that appeared to have been summarily executed, or tortured, with corpses lying on streets or piled in basements.
With the help of military records left behind in Bucha and cross-referenced with social media profiles, RFE/RL identified several members of the one particular unit — the 234th Pskov Regiment — that was directly involved in the killings of civilians.
In the correspondence obtained by RFE/RL, the conversation about the mutilated ears began when Demurchiev wrote to another army officer who was a longtime acquaintance: Major General Igor Timofeev, the first deputy commander of the 36th Army.
“You didn’t touch the ears? Like when we were kids?” Timofeev replied in response.
It’s unclear exactly what Timofeev was referring to.
However, both he and Demurchiev fought in Chechnya in the 2000s, during the conflict that ravaged the Russian region.
Demurchiev then started a separate chat on the same subject with his wife, Aleksandra. In one of her responses, she also appeared to refer to Chechnya when reacting to the ear photo:
“I thought those were tales from Chechnya times,” she wrote. “Turns out it’s true.”
Aleksandra could not be reached for comment.
Russian forces have been accused of amputating ears of prisoners in the past.
During the First Chechen War, in the 1990s, journalists and human rights activists documented multiple reports of reported mutilations by Russian troops. In 2000-2001, during the second conflict in the region, Human Rights Watch and the Russian rights group Memorial described bodies with severe mutilations, including scalping, broken limbs, and cut-off fingers and ears.
Russian media have described similar practices by Chechen fighters.
In 2022, Schemes obtained another series of recordings of calls from Russian soldiers, intercepted by Ukrainian intelligence. In one, a soldier could be heard saying of a prisoner: “He wouldn’t talk. They cut off his ear.”
Demurchiev mentioned amputating ears again in late 2024 in a voice message sent to a contact identified as Valery Nepop.
RFE/RL was able to determine that Nepop was likely an officer with the Federal Security Service, Russia’s main domestic intelligence agency.
“You’re the boss of a super organization, that’s my dream,” Demurchiev can be heard saying. “Damn, and you even cut off the ears. But at our age they don’t do that anymore; we just give out the orders.”
Of Mice And Generals
Some of the materials sent or received by Demurchiev showcased dark, juvenile, and often sadistic humor among his colleagues or acquaintances, many of whom are Russian officers.
In one received by Demurchiev in December 2023, a live mouse is shown tied up by its legs — spread-eagled, as if it were being crucified — as a Russian voice pretends to interrogate the mouse, offering it a cigarette.
Demurchiev replied with a smiley-face emoji to the video, sent by Lieutenant General Mikhail Kosobokov, commander of the 49th Combined Arms Army.
In a separate message sent to Kosobokov, Demurchiev sent a Russian language meme that said: “It’s not a war crime if it was fun.”
In another series of messages with a person who appeared to be a military intelligence officer attached to the FSB named Roman, Demurchiev asked Roman what to do about a Ukrainian prisoner in his custody.
“I’ve got one prisoner… I can gift him to you,” he wrote in the October 2023 messages. “He’s sitting in a pit… What should I do with him — dispose of him or give him to you?”
“We didn’t have time to torture him, so the info was friendly,” Demurchiev wrote. “But you’ve got plenty of time — you can use tools that make people tell the truth.”
RFE/RL identified the prisoner in question: a 42-year-old man from the southern city of Zaporizhzhya who spent nearly two years in Russian captivity, including a facility in Altai, a Russian region far from Ukraine.
In the summer 2025, the man was returned to Ukraine, as part of a prisoner exchange.
RFE/RL reporters contacted the soldier via relatives. The man declined to speak in detail, saying he was in poor physical and mental health. He only said that he had been severely beaten and subjected to electric shock.
‘Are They Dismembering Them?’
Other messages exchanged by Demurchiev point to his possible complicity not only in blatant war crimes — but also possibly outright murder.
In December 2024, Demurchiev received a video message that appears to have been taken by drone, using a thermal imaging camera. A voice speaking in Russian off-camera asks: “Are they dismembering them?”
Yeah, with a shovel,” another voice responds.
“Are they ours?” the first voice says, asking if the people wielding the shovels are Russian soldiers.
Yeah,” the second voice replies.
Holy shit!” the first exclaims.
Other messages sent by Demurchiev explain that the soldiers shown in the video were former prison inmate and that they had hacked three surrendering Ukrainians to death using sapper shovels.
“Well, I reported this to you. Two of the cons made it into the stronghold. There were three Ukrainians,” he wrote to his commanding officer, General Oleg Mityaev, using a derisive insult to describe them. “They took them prisoner and then chopped them up with shovels. Shit. Beasts. But look, shit, they executed them with sapper shovels. Shit.”
RFE/RL identified the Ukrainian military unit whose soldiers were taken prisoner and then killed by Russian troops. The unit said the incident occurred in eastern Ukraine. The unit also asked RFE/RL not to disclose its identity or the names of the deceased, saying that could traumatize relatives or survivors.
Intelligence data provided by the unit identified the former prison inmates who were mentioned by Demurchiev in the video: members of the “Black Mamba” unit of the 252nd Motorized Rifle Regiment, part of the Third Division of Russia’s 20th Combined Arms Army.
In later correspondence, Demurchiev reported the details of the incident to Mityaev, who commanded the Russia’s 20th Army. Mityaev responded with praise.
“The ‘cons’ who took that location and chopped them up with shovels, God willing they’ll survive,” he said. “They should definitely be nominated for an award. Keep pushing, little by little. Well done…Good job, keep pushing, keep pushing, crush the bastards, shit.”
Yelizaveta Surnacheva is journalist for Systema, RFE/RL’s Russian Investigative Unit. Focused on political and social issues, she previously worked as an editor for the Russian investigative outlet Proyekt and BBC News.
Valeriya Yegoshyna is a journalist for Schemes (Skhemy), an investigative news project run by RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service. Yehoshyna is the 2024 winner of the ICFJ Knight International Journalism Award. She was recognized as one of the “Top 30 Under 30” by the Kyiv Post in 2019 and has won a number of other awards, including the top prizes at the V. Serhienko Investigative Journalism Competition in 2017 and the Mezhyhirya Festival in 2018. An investigation she co-authored in 2023 about Izyum and the Russian invasion of Ukraine received a Special Certificate of Excellence at the Global Shining Light Awards from the Global Investigative Journalism Network.
Kira Tolstyakova is an editor for Schemes, the investigative unit of RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service.
Schemes (Skhemy) is the award-winning investigative project of RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service. Launched in 2014, it has exposed high-level corruption and abuse of power for over a decade. Following Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, the project expanded to uncovering Russian war crimes.
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