“I’ll tell you a secret. We have a weapon that no one has and that not even you Europeans can send us: women.” At the Odessa Polytechnic, where the city and the Black Sea begin to look each other in the eye, dozens of women prepare to go into battle. Apparently invisible Russian ships keep the city under fire. Here and there you can hear artillery shots anticipated by anti-aircraft sirens. The Ukrainian defense holds but Odessa is not distracted and recruits hundreds of volunteer militiamen. Men, at the beginning. Women, in the last few days. “There are a lot of them, they come here, also elegantly dressed and want to take Kalashnikov lessons. Not to defend themselves but Ukraine”, says Alex, one of the key characters of this training center set up in a few days but in which nothing appears improvised. This type of school, since the first days of the war, has been spreading throughout Ukraine, on different levels. If in Lviv, a city still far from the hot front of the conflict, one looks at the teaching of the fundamentals here, in Odessa, the Ak-74 is revealed in almost all its secrets. Hundreds of people a week train to take it apart and reassemble it. To shoot behind the barricades. Shooting on the go, aiming at the Black Sea sky, never as threatening as in this winter. From every area of ​​the city they have arrived here in the last three weeks at the Polytechnic to follow the lessons of the instructors, almost all members of the Ukrainian army. They are accurate lessons, made to people who are not always their first experience with weapons. Everyone here trains with a given weapon. Time is running out and in Odessa, D-Day could also be tomorrow.
“I was already working with the military, taking care of medications. Now I’m at the first lesson, but I’m learning”, explains Elena Savchenko, made up as if she were at the Opera House but quickly, immediately after, to take up her Kalashnikov: “Here there are many women, we are ready. We also need us and we must all help each other “. In the few breaks she allowed there is the rush to smoke outside the balcony of this Soviet building in origin and architecture, where what, perhaps, was a gymnasium has turned into a simulation of a battle, complete with bags yes sand. There is no room for negotiations here. Here the sanctions in Brussels are light years away. The mantra is to resist and win. “It is not difficult to learn how to use an Ak-74. It is something mechanical, one of the first cities conquered by the Russians. They tell of having lived weeks in fear and in the crosshairs of enemy soldiers. Then they decided to escape. Three Russian checkpoints, the panic of a corridor for displaced people only open for 15 minutes, then the last yellow-blue check. Finally, Odessa. And the Russians one of the first cities conquered by the Russians. They tell of having lived weeks in fear and in the crosshairs of enemy soldiers. Then they decided to escape. Three Russian checkpoints, the panic of a corridor for displaced people only open for 15 minutes, then the last yellow-blue check. Finally, Odessa. And the Russians
“We – says Katarina – live in a house in the countryside. They showed up armed and asked us to be their friends. My mother spoke to us, let them in. She let them go to our sauna and they told us they would be come every night to use it. ” Until Anton, Katarina and his mother chose freedom.

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