ODESA — The Bristol Hotel’s salmon-pink facade is boarded up; its walls are mottled with soot and shattered glass. Its style is now Baroque Revival meets ballistic missile—a frieze cast from Russian violence.
This building in central Odesa holds fond memories for me. I’ve stayed here several times while covering the war over the last three years. Its paneled walls, patterned floors, and velvet curtains always remind me of the anachronistic fussiness of a tiered wedding cake. In the near darkness of a blackout or air raid its high-ceilinged restaurant has an almost Gothic feel. Miss Havisham would have felt at home here. It is a place where time seems to move slowly or not at all.
But time caught up with the Bristol when Moscow hit it on January 31, in a missile strike that injured seven people. There are no military targets in Odesa’s historic city center. The closest is the port, a few kilometers away. Moscow claimed Ukrainian spy chief Kyrylo Budanov was in the bunker of hotel. In truth, the Russians simply wanted to terrorize the people here.
The Bristol is not only Odesa’s most famous hotel, it is a cultural landmark. Russian Nobel laureate Ivan Bunin and Sister Carrie author Theodore Dreiser were among the intellectuals who dined in its restaurant, which stood for around 126 years until it was destroyed last month. I returned to Odesa two weeks later and surveyed the Bristol’s blown-out windows and shattered marble from just across the road on Italiiska (Italian) Street. This is Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine in microcosm: a war not just on the Ukrainian people but on civilization too.