In Odessa, anxiety over Russia's next move

Oren Dorell | USA TODAY

ODESSA, Ukraine — Like many people in this gritty southwestern port city on the Black Sea, Nastya Shapoval is afraid more trouble is in store after a series of bombs targeted pro-Ukrainian activists and separatists announced plans to spread their campaign to Odessa.

"Of course, I'm worried," says Shapoval, 19, a law student at the Military Academy of Odessa, who lost many friends among government forces fighting separatists in eastern Ukraine in the past few months. "As far as (rebels) managed to get ... anything is possible."

Ukrainian forces and pro-Russian separatists have begun to withdraw heavy weapons from the front lines as part of a shaky cease-fire agreement that was supposed to start Feb. 15 in the eastern part of the country, where fierce battles have been ongoing for months and have left nearly 5,800 dead since April.

Though Odessa is more than 400 miles away from the separatist stronghold in Donetsk, it is haunted by the deadly conflict. More than 50 people were killed when a building was set on fire in May during clashes between pro-Russian activists and Ukrainian government supporters.

The city could see renewed violence after separatists announced a new phase of the "Russian Spring" this week, calling for an expansion of the rebel movement to the cities of Kharkiv, Kherson, Nikolaev and Odessa, according to an unconfirmed report in a Facebook post by Andrew Levus, a member of Ukraine's parliament.

For Max Vitalyevich, 17, the nation's conflict came home when an apartment belonging to pro-government activists in his building was bombed Feb. 11, shattering windows in his home.

Vitalyevich, who's learning to become a mechanic at a vocational school, faces the possibility of being drafted when he turns 18 to help defend his country against the separatist advances. He says Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, elected on promises to fight corruption and lift Ukraine's failing economy, should do whatever is necessary to restore peace.

"It's easy to say 'fight corruption,' but it led to different consequences — to war and not reform," he says.

Poroshenko's pledge to move the economy forward is also in doubt. As the conflict drags on, many businesses have suspended new projects and Russian tourists — a major source of income for this beach town — have disappeared.

Huddled over a cup of hot tea with milk at the Odessa train station, geologist Nikolai Vasilyevich, 58, blames the war for the economic downturn. The economy is "artificially destabilized" by separatists in the east who seek "the complete collapse of Ukraine," he says. "Those are Putin's projects."

"If there was no outside interference, we would have solved our problems," he says.

Business has been so bad that trinkets vendor Irina Dobrovolskaya, 43, put off taking vacations, parked her car and started taking the bus to her stall in a pedestrian tunnel under a large traffic circle.

Dobrovolskaya worries separatists will bring the fighting to Odessa. This mostly Russian-speaking town has always been ambivalent about its connection to Russia, she says, but she doesn't want the troubles of Donetsk to come here.

The garrison of Russian "peacekeepers" in the breakaway region of Transnistria, an hour's drive away in neighboring Moldova, is another worry. "You never know what Putin's military forces will do," she says.

Taxi driver Sergei Popov, 55, a retired paratrooper who served in the Soviet and Ukrainian militaries, says the conflict "could easily" come to Odessa.

"Russia needs the south of Ukraine and Odessa is part of it," Popov says. "If they would get the rest of Luhansk (region), they'll get Kharkiv and Odessa, of course."

Popov describes the ousting of pro-Russian leader Viktor Yanukovych a year ago as a coup. Popov says that if he got drafted, he would fight for Ukraine.

"I will be for Odessa, my motherland, against separatists or Russia," he says. "I don't agree with the government, but I would defend the people of Ukraine."