I’m writing this from a hotel room balcony in Odessa, Ukraine, looking out over the Black Sea. A few hours after we landed, the sun went down—and the sky lit up.
Tracer fire. Heavy machine guns. The crack of air-defense cannons. Every few seconds another burst stitched across the dark as Ukrainian gunners tried to knock Russian drones out of the sky.
If you’ve never seen air defense at work, it’s eerie. You’re standing there in the dark, listening for the drone engine you can’t quite hear yet, watching glowing rounds arc up toward an invisible target… and somewhere out there, a warhead is either going to get stopped—or come down on somebody’s apartment.
Welcome to “normal life” in southern Ukraine, four years into this war.
Life Under the Drones
Russia has been sending hundreds of drones and missiles into Ukraine—sometimes five, six, seven, eight hundred in a night. About every few days there’s another big wave. Most of the time, the targets are civilian neighborhoods—apartment blocks, playgrounds, power plants, shopping centers. I’ll be taking you to some of those impact sites while I’m here, and you can judge for yourself whether those were “military targets.”
Earlier today we walked along the waterfront. It looked, at first glance, almost normal- moms pushing strollers along the promenade, guys running with their dogs, people drinking coffee in seaside cafés, a couple of lunatics swimming in the Black Sea in 50-degree weather
And then you notice the new concrete bomb shelters popping up in the parks.
These look a lot like what you see in Israel—thick concrete tubes with a steel door and a little S-shaped entrance so shrapnel can’t fly straight in. You can squeeze 15–20 people into one. They’re not meant to survive a direct hit, but if a drone or missile goes off nearby, they’ll keep you alive.
That’s what “normal” means in Odessa now: push the baby in a stroller, grab a coffee, make sure you know where the nearest shelter is.
While Russia is busy terrorizing civilians, Ukraine is doing something very different: it’s going after Russia’s wallet. Instead of pouring their limited missiles into random apartment buildings, Ukrainians are focusing their own drones and homegrown missiles—like the Neptune and the newer Flamingo—on oil infrastructure and air defense systems deep inside Russia.
One of the biggest recent examples: the strike on Novorossiysk, a major Russian oil port on the Black Sea.
Moscow called that port “Fortress Russia.” It was supposed to be impregnable—ringed with their most advanced S-400 air defense systems, layered radar, the works. Then Ukrainian drones and missiles came in low over the water, slipped through that air-defense bubble, and:
Shut down a port that moved over 2 million barrels of crude a day
Destroyed or damaged a big chunk of Russia’s high-end air defenses
Sent one large tanker listing badly after being hit by an unmanned surface vessel
By some estimates, that one port alone accounted for around 20% of Russia’s energy exports. You take that off the market, you’re not just hitting Putin’s war machine—you’re jacking with the global oil flow.
Ukraine has hit multiple Black Sea terminals and depots in recent weeks. People here have started calling these strikes “Ukrainian sanctions.” When Western leaders talk big about sanctions but don’t enforce them, Ukrainians say, “Fine. We’ll sanction Russia ourselves—by blowing up the infrastructure that funds the war.”
Russia still has a lot of people and a lot of guns. But it does not have infinite money. Roughly 40% of the Russian government’s revenue comes from energy exports. Every time Ukraine takes out a port, refinery, or depot, that number gets harder for the Kremlin to sustain.
That’s called strategy. And frankly, it’s a lot more moral than what Russia is doing to Ukrainian civilians.
“Why Should Americans Care?”
I know some of you are asking the same thing I see in the comments all the time:
“Why should we give Ukraine another penny?”
“What does it matter to anyone here if Russia owns Ukraine?”
“We’ve got 42 million Americans on welfare. Take care of our own first.”
So let’s talk about it.
