Deputy Mayor Kaarel Oja visited Odessa, Tallinn’s partner city in Ukraine on 11-14 May and met with the mayor, members of the City Government and local cultural figures. The objective of the meetings was to reaffirm our sustained commitment to supporting Ukraine and Odessa during the ongoing war and deepen our cultural cooperation.

According to Deputy Mayor Kaarel Oja, the most important thing at the moment, during the war started by Russia, is of course cooperation between Estonia and Ukraine at the central government level, but right after that come the local governments. “Just like the Ukrainian state, Odessa as a city has unequivocally chosen its path, and that is the European path,” Oja said. “The visit provided a lot of insight into how we can support both the Ukrainian state and the city of Odessa today as well as in the future.”

One of the main topics of the meetings was the inscription of Odessa’s historic city centre to the UNESCO World Heritage List. “In addition to protection, this also brings quite a few new responsibilities, and as Tallinn has more than 25 years of experience, we can certainly be of help in many ways,” explained Oja. “At the same time, it is clear that we also have a lot to learn from Odessa and their difficult experiences in the past year. Contact between Tallinn and Odessa has been quite close during this year, and we are doing everything we can to keep it that way. It was a pleasure to see the strength of both Ukraine and the city of Odessa. Of course, daily life is focused on the current difficult situation and the ongoing war, but there is also a confident look to the future, and the topics raised were related to the hopefully imminent peace and the rebuilding of the country and the city. Our task is to provide assurance that we will stand with Ukraine even after the war, and support them on their path to Europe.”

According to Odessa Mayor Gennadiy Trukhanov, Odessa has a close partnership with Tallinn. “Thank you for all your help since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine,” Trukhanov said. “We realise that we are not alone, and this gives us strength.”

The Deputy Mayor presented an invitation to 40 children from Odessa to attend a summer camp organised by the Tallinn City Government.

At the same time as the Deputy Mayor’s visit, Estonian musicians Raul Vaigla, Jaak Sooäär and Karl-Juhan Laanesaar were also in Odessa. Together with Alina Bzhezhinska, a harpist with Ukrainian roots, they performed for a full house at the Jazz for Ukraine concert. The concert was organized by SA Kultuuripartnerlus, led by Meelis Kubits. As far as we know, this was the first visit of an Estonian cultural collective to Ukraine since 24 February last year.

Since the beginning of the war, Tallinn has provided humanitarian aid to partner cities Kyiv and Odessa, as well as other cities with which it has close contacts – Lviv and Zhytomyr.

Since March 2022, Tallinn has supported Odessa with 50,000 euros through the Ukrainian Red Cross, supported the inscription of Odessa’s historic city centre to the UNESCO World Heritage List, supported the Odessa Classics festival with 15,000 euros and invited 40 children to a summer camp.