he saidRaising our defiant hands into the sky,We flap our wings of fire.Covered in smoke and flames,Chastening our baby strollers with Molotov cocktails,And our wedding aisles with gunpowder,Clasping our mothers’ hands and a gray cat,Our wintry sky and frozen promises,We flap our wings of fire.In the name of humanity,We fortify our beaches,At the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov,We sing of Odessa in a snowstorm,We sing of you Russian Warship!Hopelessly hoping—We lament at the banks of Pripyat,For the skies to close down,We lament on the streets of Mariupol’,For the carnage to die down do not go brave into that dark,So we gather in Kodyma to weave,Our camouflage throughout the day,Our prayers throughout the night,We count ancestral bones in mid-afternoon,Of the Ukrainian might.We anoint our daggers with oil of patriotism,We orchestrate a tragic symphony,Behold The world engraves on its heart,In slow motion Giving births in bomb shelters,In makeshift basement hospices,We pack our socks and four cups of milk,We bid farewell to our kinsmen and their crosses,Buried in mass graves We run through the twisted ruins of crushed vehicles,Crushed bodies of Sumy,All reeling for ignition.Squalling do not go brave into the dark,We surge towards Lviv.Sobbing through our shattered windows and souls,Both hanging in the frigid morning air,Undesirably breathing in the meltdowns of nineteen eighty-six,All over again we surge towards Lviv,Holding onto memories filled with sunflowers and lyrics,Clutching onto the last train to Przemyśl,With hands devoid of hope.Fleeing the bloodbath Ripping our hearts in two—One for our living and one for our dead,Firmly grasped in our memories Bakhmach,We jump in front of the Russian tank.Yet do not go brave into that dark,Pleading for the world to see,How angels are falling dead from our skies,And how democracy is not free.We flap our wings of fire,Yellow and blue is what we bleedWe listen to our messiah.From Kherson to Chernihiv Fanned by the megalomania of a man so weak,Raising our defiant hands into the sky,Across the Slavic borders Lit by the true ‘Servant of the People’,So when he says full of Putins,With torchlights and ammunition,Dreaming of bloodless vengeance,We sit tightly shielding our Kyiv,Not Kiev – in faith and spirit,Enshrined in our hero *Names of Ukrainian cities/regions – Odessa **Przemyśl (pronounced “p-SHEH-mih-shuhl”) is a southeastern city in Poland that has been a reception point for Ukrainian refugees in the aftermath of the Russianinvasion of Ukraine on February 24 Urvashi Bundel is the author of Unapologetically Feminist a feminist anthology published in March 2022 that explores themes like refugees and women's rights She is a humanitarian who has worked at the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the United Nations Office for Project Services She holds degrees from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University in Japan and academic recognitions from Leiden University and Melbourne Law School and website in this browser for the next time I comment Δdocument.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value" What We DoWho We AreNews Decoder UpdatesContact Us © News Decoder 2025. All rights reserved. | Terms & Conditions | Privacy Policy | Editorial Policy News Decoder is the educational services unit of Nouvelles-Découvertes Webmaster Joy Matéo – Digit’all Communication It all started with a small Turkish fortress the town around which survived many wars and raids Balta became the capital of the Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic but from 1940 the Baltic county was ceded to the Odessa region of the USSR Local attractions worth noting: the Orthodox Cathedral the building of the pedagogical school (former castle of the 18th century) the buildings of the former monastery (now a sports school and military hospital) the Baltic cemeteries (the oldest monuments: XVII-XIX centuries) the ancient buildings of the Podolsk town (gradually disappearing) and much more The exact date of the first settlement in the city is unknown The first reliable mention of the existence of a small town in this area dates back to the thirties of the seventeenth century referring to the stories of local residents on the instructions of Prince Lubomyrsky (representative of one of the richest families in the region) it was founded a village called Paliyev (Paliyev Lake) Prince Józef Lubomyrski began building a Polish fortress on the left bank of the Kodyma River later named after him Józefgrad According to the administrative division of the Rzeczpospolita the city belonged to the Bratslav Voivodeship On the other side of Kodyma then began construction of a Turkish fortress called "Balta" comes from the kind of armament of the Turkish army such as an ax called "bart" from the swamp close to the first settlement a large Armenian community also lived in the Turkish Balta The Turkish government facilitated the settlement of the region the inhabitants of the so-called "khan's settlement" were exempt from taxes The population of the settlement consisted of Ukrainians At the end of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Russian Old Believers also moved to these places In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the city (both its historical parts: Balta and Józefgrad) fell victim to constant Russian-Turkish and Russian-Polish wars the city was attacked and looted by detachments of Haidamaks led by Maksym Zalizniak the city was "visited" by a plague epidemic And in 1769 a detachment of the Russian military leader Prozorovsky burned the border fortress of Balta and the surrounding villages in order to devastate the enemy's rear The revival of Józefgrad began in the 1770s when the son of Prince Stanislaw Lubomyrski Alexander received from his father part of the estates he contributed to the reconstruction of the fortress; this year the city received the Magdeburg law The commercial significance of the city in the eighteenth century as the Baltic was located on the trade road leading from Podolia Kyiv region to the shores of the Black Sea to Turkish cities such as Ochakiv and Hadjibey Then the road leading South was called the Baltic famous for selling Ukrainian and Nogai cattle the Turkish town of Balta was ceded to the Russian Empire and in 1793 Józefgrad (soon renamed Yelensk) and other Lubomyrsky lands were sold and also became part of the Russian state Balta was part of the Ekaterinoslav governorate Yelensk and Balta were officially united into one city which became the center of the Podolsk province the Odessa-Balta railway was put into operation which connected the south-western agricultural areas with the port of Odessa Balta is becoming one of the largest shopping centers in southern Ukraine which received a great resonance and strengthened the emigration sentiment among the Jews Balta became one of the leading centers of the Zionist movement in Podillya During the national liberation struggles of Ukraine the city constantly passed from hand to hand The city of Balta was occupied by both the Bolsheviks and the Denikinites the city recognized the rule of Hetman Pavel Skoropadsky but an uprising broke out among the Austro-German garrison of the Baltic It was not until 1921 that the communist regime was finally established the Russian Bolsheviks included the Baltic county in the newly created Odessa Province more than 3,500 settlers from the Volga region and the Kuban were housed in villages and towns the Baltic county was created under a new administrative division in 1925-1928 Balta was the capital of the Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic the Baltic county was annexed to the Odessa region of the USSR Immediately after the beginning of the Great Patriotic War the city was finally transferred to Romania where it administratively merges with the province of Transnistria and the Italian military commandant's office The city became the center of a new administrative unit as the Stalinist regime had completely destroyed the religious life of the city A Jewish ghetto was established in the Baltic and Ukraine also began to be supplied to the city who was later recognized as the "righteous woman of the world" was involved in saving the lives of the Jewish community the troops of the 2nd Ukrainian Front occupied Balta the city began to return to peaceful life: damaged and destroyed residential buildings were restored the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine adopted the Resolution "On the assignment of the city of Balta Odessa region to the category of cities of regional significance." One of the oldest places in Balta is the area opposite the fire station (now It was founded in the early XVII century by Prince Joseph Lubomyrsky who built a castle on the high bank of the river Kodyma Prince Stanislaw Lubomyrsky arranged this square and built a church near it (in the 70s of the last century the church was used as a bus station) and a office (now when the city became a county within the Podolsk province three more buildings have appeared next to it: the Orthodox Cathedral when Balta became the capital of the Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic a fire station was located on the territory of the castle and in 1929 a fire tower was built a monument was erected in the square on the mass graves of partisans and Red Army soldiers and a monument to the victims of the 1933 famine The Orthodox Cathedral and Church in the 90s were handed over to the faithful The city has a museum of local lore and a museum of folk life Odeska Oblast has a high level of seismic activity Based on data from the past 55 years and our earthquake archive back to 1900 there are about 10.4 quakes on average per year in or near Odeska Oblast Odeska Oblast has had at least 7 quakes above magnitude 7 since 1900 which suggests that larger earthquakes of this size occur infrequently probably on average approximately every 15 to 20 years Odeska Oblast has about 21 quakes of magnitude 2 or higher per year The last earthquake in Odeska Oblast occurred 1 day 9 hours ago and had a magnitude of 2.8: Mag. 2.8 earthquake Ukraine - writeAge(1746389234)A light magnitude 2.8 earthquake occurred in the Black Sea near the coast of  Ukraine late in the evening of Sunday The quake had a very shallow depth of 7 km (4.3 mi) and was not felt (or at least not reported so) Odeska Oblast was shaken by 3 quakes of magnitude 4.0 or above There have been also 40 quakes below magnitude 2.0 which people don't normally feel 2024 at 1.48 am local time (Europe/Bucharest GMT +3) The depth of the quake is unknown.The quake was reported felt by some people near the epicenter.