Aussie, Banker, Soldier, Volunteer – Living the Dream in Odesa

Maurice O’Connell is an Australian former banker and military officer, who came to provide humanitarian aid to Ukraine and decided to establish permanently in Odesa.

Tell us a little about your education and your life experience, just to understand who you are.

I’m a little bit of a confused personality in the sense that I’m partly British, partly Australian. Spent my life between the UK and Australia. I was educated in the UK, I did a service commission in the British army for a while, and then worked in banking and finance. Most of my working career was in Australia, in Sydney, where the finance jobs are. But, back in 2019, I moved to Adelaide, which is quite a bit smaller city.

It’s quite rare to meet Australians in Odesa. What brought you here?

In 2019, I took early retirement and. I don’t think I’ve been busier in my life since that retirement. I came out here in 2022, shortly after the war had started, in May ’22, and I’d intended to spend three months actually doing a motorbike trip in France, Spain, Morocco. I already had a motorbike, which I have in a barn in Oxfordshire, which I hadn’t used for the previous two years because of COVID. And so I intended to use it in 2022, but the war broke out. I thought I’d spend two months in Ukraine just helping out where I could, and then pick up my motorbike and do that motorbike trip.

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But that trip never happened. It got under my skin. And at the end of the two months, I just couldn’t leave Odesa. I couldn’t leave the people I was with, a bunch of Ukrainians helping Ukrainians. So those two months ended up becoming six months.

So you chose to come to this country because of the war, to help?

It was very much to help in a humanitarian sense. But I describe myself as a fair weather warrior, because you might understand that the seasons are different in Australia to here. It’s getting cold. So like the wild geese, I’ll return back to Australian summertime.

What about your humanitarian aid work here in Odesa?

I met up with a group of Ukrainians helping Ukrainians, and they were quite inspirational. They got together on the first day of the war, pretty much. And of course, based in Odesa, where there are a lot of IDPs, refugees coming from Mykolaiv, from Kherson, and they were just providing food, clothing and that sort of humanitarian help to the people affected by the war.

Once they became more established and had relationships, particularly with some larger German NGOs, they started providing humanitarian assistance to the forgotten villages in the Mykolaiv and in the Kherson areas. And particularly after the liberation of Kherson, there was, of course, a big need in the areas that had been occupied. Initially we were providing that immediate aid, which was food, hygiene and then also building materials for roofs and new windows. But at the same time, we’re still providing food and aid packs to people in Odesa itself.

Have you been personally in Kherson? Because this region is quite dangerous and you need even a military authorization.

I was actually in Kherson City two weeks ago. We are able to get there, because of the punch that our organization New Dawn, has. We were able to get that permission. Therefore, I was in Kherson and that was quite a salutary experience.

The city was very, very quiet in terms of traffic and population on the street. And even as we were there, we drove past a house that was burning, having been hit by an artillery shell within the previous half an hour. We had come from a village about 15 kilometers east of Kherson, which was quite close to the Dnipro, and it was part of a cluster of villagers. And that night they’d been hit by six Russian glide bombs. We had gone to talk about providing winterization, but actually, we ended up doing impromptu emergency needs assessment when we went to two nearby villages that had just been struck by glide bombs only a handful of hours previously.

The shocking thing is that there was absolutely no military presence in those places at all. They were totally country villages that had been hit in the middle of the night.

And why did you choose Odesa? Ukraine is a big country.

That was just one of life’s coincidences When I came to Ukraine, or intended to come to Ukraine, I had no idea where I was going to. But my cousin’s daughter was working with a German humanitarian organization that was sending aid to the group in Odesa. So, she put me in touch with the team here, and that’s how I got the introduction and came to be here. 

Apart from your humanitarian aid activity, you decide to be a resident. Why in Odesa?

Well, I did fall in love with Odesa. It is a hidden gem. It’s just a really beautiful city with a lot of history and you just have to look at the Opera House, which has got to be one of the finest opera theatres in the world. And the old city center. It’s a late 19th century small city, intact, unchanged. It’s run down, it’s rough, it’s raw, but it has that original charm with the old buildings, with the tree lined boulevards. So it’s a real hidden gem. And of course on the Black Sea. So you have the benefits of a Mediterranean existence, but very inexpensive.

I mentioned the opera house. Where else in the world can you go to an opera or a ballet and get a good seat for only the equivalent of US $10. And everything else here is commensurately inexpensive. So you can eat well, rent is cheap and I fell in love with it.

I actually bought an apartment here. So, yes, I’m putting down roots and looking forward in my life. I can see myself spending the summers here in Odesa as a base and escaping the cold and the wet of Adelaide in the Australian winter.

You came here during a war. Can you imagine the city in peacetime?

Well, in some respects, not that different. I think it’s a little bit of a misnomer, mis-appreciation that Odesa is a city at war. Yes, of course it is, but life is remarkably normal and the actual danger, when you look at it realistically, is actually quite, quite small. Certainly you do get air alarms almost on a daily basis and from time to time you get rocket attacks.

But this year I think it’s quieter than last year when we had a lot of Russian Shahed drones. I remember there was one occasion we had drone attacks every night for five consecutive nights, usually between 2 and 3 o’clock in the morning.

This year life carries on pretty much normal. But the main difference is that it’s quiet – in the sense that there are fewer people. So I imagine that life will be very, very similar, only with a lot more people, and of course a lot more tourists, because you get very few non-Ukrainians here at the moment.

Some foreigners visiting Odesa said that it’s like visiting a city which doesn’t feel the war, because people are in the restaurants and go to concerts. So apparently this city kept normal social life. Does this disturb you? Like a sign that people forgot about the war? Or on the contrary, is this a sign of courage to live, notwithstanding the war?

That’s a very complicated question, and the answer is a bit of both. One sees a number of soldiers in uniform, and I can’t help but think what they must be thinking when they see normal life happening around them.

On the other hand, do you want to see a city that’s just depressed and overcome by the sense of war and conflict when we’re into the second year? And the answer is probably no.

And so if you see that degree of resilience, then you know, in one sense, Russia has been beaten because it shows that the spirit is there, the life carries on despite what is happening.

Since you used to be a professional soldier, did you detect something particularly impressive in the spirit of the Ukrainian resistance?

Yes, certainly. My military background in the British army was a much more disciplined environment. You had officers that were saluted, you had much more discipline. The Ukrainian army, I’ve never seen an officer saluted. It’s a totally different way of fighting a war. It’s a much more egalitarian way of fighting.

But in terms of the spirit, the enthusiasm, the sheer willpower to get the job done, I think it’s almost unprecedented. And where you get a civilian army that can be mobilized just so effectively, so quickly and with such enthusiasm as happened with the Ukrainians at the start of the war, I think is something exceptional. I don’t think there’d be many countries in the world where you would see that.

Tell us one dream that you could realize here in Odesa.

Well, my dream for many years was not having to have another winter. And Adelaide, it’s cold and it’s wet in winter. So, I have found a very cost effective and wonderful way of always avoiding winters by having now a summer pad in Odesa, which is an absolute charming Mediterranean style city. So I think I’m getting the best of all worlds.

And of course, Odesa is a European city, so it’s easy. And after the war is finished and the Odesa airport is operating again, the world is my oyster in terms of being able to get on the plane and visit whatever city I want in Europe, but use Odesa as my base.