From Mariia’s 16th-floor flat, the calm waters of the Black Sea stretch out into the horizon beneath the fading twilight. “Up here you can see and hear when the drones come,” she says, standing by a wall-length, floor-to-ceiling window. When they hit buildings and homes in the city of Odesa down below “we see all the fires too”. Her daughter Eva, who is nine, has learned the shapes and sounds of the objects that zoom through the sky on a daily basis. She proudly shows off a list of social media channels she checks when the air raid alerts go off. “She knows whether what’s coming is a risk or a threat, and that calms her down,” her father Sergii says. There is scarcely a place in Ukraine that has not been targeted since Russia launched its full-scale invasion nearly four years ago. But in recent weeks Odesa – Ukraine’s third largest city – has come under sustained attack. Through strikes on port and energy infrastructure, Russia is trying to cripple the region’s economy and dent the population’s morale.
Under fire from the sea, Ukrainian families in Odesa try to escape Russian barrage
