Accomplishing almost nothing and maybe learning a few things in Mykolaiv

Ahhhhhh!!

I arrived in Mykolaiv on Monday morning, tired from a bad night of sleep. The night before, Russians launched a cruise missile and 22 Iranian-made Shahed kamikaze drones at Odesa. The attack wounded eight people and luckily killed no one, while 20 or so buildings were damaged, including the Odesa Fine Arts Museum.

It was the largest attack on Odesa in at least a couple months. If the Russians were aiming for the port, then the cruise missile went long and landed in the middle of the street outside the museum. Ukrainian Air Force said that air defense shot down 15 of the drones.

It was hard to tell from the ground which of the propeller-driven drones were shot down and which ones made it anywhere near their targets, but you could hear where they were going from the sound of their two-stroke motors. People call them “mopeds.” Iran recently showed off a new jet-powered Shahed that will be faster and capable of carrying a higher payload.

Thankfully Odesa has seen relatively few attacks — relatively as far as Ukrainian cities go — although Russia has ramped up its strikes on the city in last few months since withdrawing from an internationally brokered deal with Ukraine to allow grain exports from the city’s port. I can’t imagine Sunday’s attack will be the last one this year.

I could have stayed in Odesa to cover the aftermath, but I ultimately stuck to my plan and went a couple hours away to Mykolaiv. It was the wrong choice. All I did in Mykolaiv was catch a cold, fail to get any meetings, sleep in a crappy bed, and miss a bus back to Odesa. It was a frustrating trip to say the least.

The last major attack in Mykolaiv came in late July. The Russians used several drones and cruise missiles, killing three people and wounded more than a dozen, including some children. The strikes also set off a large fire in the city.

The Russians captured Kherson in the first couple days of the invasion. They pushed up toward Mykolaiv, but the Ukrainians stopped them on the way and they never advanced further. Mykolaiv sits at the mouth of the Dnieper River. Ukraine forced the Russians back across the river to the south last year, toward Crimea, and now they’re pushing across the river themselves. The Russians have been fortifying that side of the river for the last year with layers of trenches, minefields, and strong points. It will not be easy for Ukraine to push through.

There is a lot of work to do, but it’s been slow going. The military and government are justifiably concerned about potentially sensitive military information getting out on the internet, so they want to know where you are and what you’re covering.

That means paperwork and a lot of planning on my part. It makes every reporting trip a gamble because everything needs to line up perfectly. Woe is me. I’ll make it work.

On Tuesday in Mykolaiv I went out for some soup at a restaurant down the street from my rental. The waitress marked me as an English-speaker and brought me an English menu. English menus are often filled with fun translations and this one was too. Among them, written over a list of available sauces:

THERE IS ALWAYS A LOT TO CHOOSE BUT SOMETIMES SOMETHING IS MISSING

Not sure yet what it means but it sounds meaningful. Many of the best things in life elude understanding. Sometimes that’s what makes them so good.