DISINFO: The Odesa city is foreign to Ukraine
SUMMARY
Residents of the regions of Ukraine, including the Black Sea region, must determine their own future. And they are unlikely to connect their fate with [...] the illegitimate Kyiv government. Look at Odesa — a city founded by the Russian Empress Catherine II. For more than two centuries since its foundation, it was Russia's outpost on the Black Sea, occupying one of the leading places in the country in terms of population and level of economic development.
Odesa and the overwhelming majority of its residents have nothing in common with the Kyiv regime. Odesa is not only a city of peace, but also a city that is difficult to squeeze into the framework of the Ukrainian state - its presence in Ukraine is alien.
RESPONSE
Pro-Kremlin disinformation narrative claiming that the city of Odesa does not belong to Ukraine.
Odesa used to be indeed part of the Russian Empire - which included not only Ukraine, but also parts of Poland, the Baltic States, Finland and Central Asia. Pro-Kremlin disinformation attempts to spread the message that it was the Russian Empire's authorities that first built cities in desert lands of what they call "Novorossiya" (part of Ukraine nowadays) in the eighteenth century and therefore these must now belong to Russia.
Such jingoist and imperialist narratives seek to overwrite the region’s multiethnic past by framing history solely through a Russian lens, denying the agency and historical significance of other ethnicities, including Ukrainians. Moreover, there were cities in these places before the Russian imperial expansion. In particular, the site of modern-day Odesa was home to a settlement founded by the Ottomans - Khadjibey.
Read our analysis of Russia's revisionist view of history and how it is used to justify Russia's full scale invasion of Ukraine of 2022.
See a similar case: Kyiv and Odesa are historically Russian cities.