A lasartearra and his family resist in New Odessa
After days of attempted bombings, Iñaki Rodriguez Jauregi rested on a “quieter night and even with some heating”
Gipuzkoan Iñaki Rodríguez Jauregi and his family live this Wednesday a day of tense calm. The night in New Odessa, the municipality in the south of Ukraine where they have lived for almost a decade, has been “very quiet”, compared to the previous ones, in which they even had to take refuge in a forest, with temperatures below zero , fleeing from the threat of bombs. They have even been able to enjoy privileges that annihilate any war: «The electricity has not failed, so we have enjoyed some heating. We slept well.”
Quite the opposite of the not very distant Odessa, located 174 kilometers from the municipality where the Lasartearra has lived for almost ten years with his Ukrainian wife and their five children, between 18 and 5 years old. “They don’t tell us anything good about Odessa,” he writes by mail. “It is heavily defended and has been bombarded from the sea. I’m afraid it’s going to be much worse than Mariupol. She is Putin’s desired pearl and he will spare no effort to get her », he says, confessing his fear. After the Kremlin troops took Kherson, 110 kilometers from the town of Rodríguez, Odessa, scene of the classic ‘Battleship Potemkin’, with its mythical and recreated scene of the child’s stroller falling down the stairs, is another priority objective from the south.
The city of Nikolaev, located just 40 kilometers south of New Odessa, is still holding out despite being subjected to incessant bombardment. “There is a lot of resistance there but several columns of Russian troops are approaching from the north to increase the siege on the city,” he explains. “A friend is a nurse there and she has told us crying that there are civilian deaths and injuries, she is horrified,” she says of the situation in her reference city, another key point to control southern Ukraine and the outlet to the Black Sea.
Between Nikolaev and Odessa are Iñaki and his children. The Lasartearra is diabetic and although they told him that they would try to get the National Military Police to take him the pills that he ran out of days ago, they still have not succeeded. “There are no drugs.” Nor food. “No one here delivers food. At first yes, but now it is impossible », he explains referring to the conflict zone in which they live. “This morning we have been without electricity or internet. Let’s see how long it lasts.”
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