People swim and sunbathe on a reopened beach at the Black Sea on Aug. 22 in Odesa. When missiles and drone attacks first hit the city — and Russian naval vessels started laying explosive sea mines around the port — the beaches were closed. Warning signs urged people to keep their distance.
Pierre Crom/Getty Images
ODESA, Ukraine — On a hot, late-summer afternoon, Tatiana Sapunshtyn came with her daughter Polina to wade and sunbathe on a city beach in Odesa in southern Ukraine.
“This is the summer to be a little bit relaxed when we have the kids,” she said. “It’s really important for everybody, for every family.”
The chic beaches of Odesa, a short walk from glitzy hotels and shoreside restaurants, were once a draw for tourists from around the world — many of them from Russia. In peacetime, cosmopolitan crowds speaking a dozen different languages would swim here together.
Now this stretch of Black Sea coast is an active war zone, at the center of a global conflict over grain shipments. Russian ships and aircraft regularly fire missiles that strike Odesa.
When missiles and drone attacks first hit the city — and Russian naval vessels started laying explosive sea mines around the port — the beaches were closed. Warning signs urged people to keep their distance.
People swim at sunset in Odesa.
Brian Mann/NPR
Even now, Sapunshtyn said she was wary of swimming out into the deeper water. They were only wading in the shallows.
“We don’t swim longer because I think…
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