Senior Lt Kirill Vikhrov stripped off his uniform and waded into the shallow estuary, the long rays of afternoon sunlight glinting in his blond hair.
Slowly, the 25-year-old soldier lowered his whole body into the briny water, closed his eyes and, for an instant, seemed to let himself go.
It had been nearly six months since Vikhrov last had a moment for himself, free of the shelling, the guns and the death that had only intensified in recent weeks along the front lines in southern Ukraine. The stresses of war have become difficult to endure.
“People are getting tired,” he said. “For some their nerves are failing. It’s constant shelling, constant tension. You can’t sleep normally. So some people are breaking.”
For a brief Sunday afternoon, though, Vikhrov retreated from the bloody conflict that he and his fellow troops have been locked in for months with Russian forces entrenched in the nearby Kherson region.
He and his girlfriend have escaped to a small, peaceful oasis about 50 miles from the front lines. The spot, along the banks of the Tylihul Estuary, has become a popular respite, where the war weary swim and sunbathe and pretend that life is normal, if only for a short while. The estuary is one of the few bodies of water along Ukraine’s Black Sea coast that is not mined or used for some military purpose.
It also has an attraction that might seem exotic even in quieter corners of Ukraine: oysters.
A few years ago, a Ukrainian entrepreneur with a flair for the unconventional started an experimental oyster farm in these waters. Despite the war, the little creatures, along with the business, have thrived.
On a recent Sunday, the small outdoor cafe run by the farm was packed, many of the wooden picnic tables occupied by those seeking a break from the fighting.
There was a table of front-line medics, and a firefighter from the nearby city of Mykolaiv, where rockets rain down nearly every night. Vikhrov was there as well, with his girlfriend, Yulia Vasilyeva, who said the idea of eating oysters and sipping wine by the water was “like something European,” that made her feel far from the war.
“Now is not the time for tourism; now is the time for survival,” Vasilyeva said. “But something like this helps you switch off for a bit.”
Andre Pigulevsky, the owner of the farm, named The Oysters of Scythia, reopened it shortly after Vikhrov and his comrades repelled a Russian advance along the Black Sea coast early in the war that had threatened to swallow his business, along with a large chunk of southern Ukraine. In appreciation, he has decreed that soldiers and their families can eat all the oysters their stomachs can hold for free.
“The purpose of this place is to have a few hours rest to feel like it is peacetime,” said Pigulevsky, 40.
Since the war began, Ukrainians have surprised the world not only by their fighting prowess but also with the way they have carried on living. In cities that have been enduring withering artillery attacks, municipal workers continue to prune trees and maintain flower beds.
The young throw raves at the sites of bombed-out buildings to encourage cleanup efforts. The internally displaced open florist shops in their adopted cities.
Even in the idyllic setting of the oyster farm, however, the signs of war are not completely absent.
Russian cruise missiles occasionally fly overhead, startling beachgoers with their horrifying whooshing noise. Drones, shot out of the sky by Ukrainian air defences, have crashed nearby, Pigulevsky said.
The Ukrainian military at first resisted Pigulevsky’s desire to reopen, citing safety concerns about large gatherings of people so close to the war zone, but officials convinced them that local residents needed some place to unwind.
To put more of a buffer between his oyster farm and the fighting, Pigulevsky is moving it across the estuary to the Odesa region side, where he has also built a small cafe and beach resort called Oysterville.
He sells one kind of oyster, a Japanese variety called Crassostrea gigas, which he buys as small spuds from suppliers in France and grows in netted sacks out in the estuary. Recently he has branched out to growing snails and bought five goats from a local family for making cheese. -- The New York Times
Michael Schwirtz
The writer is an investigative reporter with NYT
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