along the black sea. on saturday, authorities reported an explosion south of odessa. of a possible sabotage. lawrence sheets is a former moscow bureau chief, he is with us now from the odessa region. lawrence, it s good to speak with you again. tell us, you ve been around the region in southern odessa, you ve seen what s happening there. this is now a region that seems to be so surrounded on three of the major sides, what s the latest of what you ve seen? that s correct. what exactly happened is night, friday, the local governance council in odessa announced martial law, lasting until monday, but potentially longer. but they re really worried about, and what they stated, is that there will be some sort of provocation, they say, or attack. today is the commemoration of the liberation of the city of odessa, the odessa region from
major russian offensive. the kramatorsk railway station was an important hub in that evacuation effort, handling about 8000 people a day. russian artillery has been relentlessly pounding ukrainian positions to the east of the city. now, most residents of kramatorsk and surrounding towns and villages, have already left the region, fleeing to safer ground further west. i m ben wedeman, cnn, reporting from the donetsk region, eastern ukraine. in the wake of that deadly a task on kramatorsk, other ukrainian cities are taking extra precautions. right now, odessa is under a strict court review into al monday morning. no one is allowed on the street or public places without special permission. this comes among rising concerns that russians will target odessa soon, as they look to take more real estate
the port here, for the most part, where a lot of refugees have crossed through in the past weeks, the last month or so. they ve let been relatively quiet the past few days, there is a three or five kilometer line of trucks that are picking up in delivering goods for exporting, because they are disappointed blockaded by the russians. so, we basically follow them out. it took two hours to reach destination that would take two. there was such a backlog of traffic along the way, from irregular motors, refugees, to trucks and so forth. through about 18 checkpoints. so, the story is basically that there was a panic, and people were fleeing. so, what do you know about the situation in odessa itself, right now. this curfew remains in place for another almost 24 hours.
various positions. but the fact is, that it s a very strict martial law, you cannot go into the streets. we when you talk about someone station a provocation, does not go back to these fears that there could be some kind of russian sympathizers without in odessa, and the theory that maybe sabotage has been behind some of these explosions? odessa is 90% to 80% speaking russian city. there been numerous individuals who have been rounded up, not because they speak russian, because everyone speaks russian and odessa, but because they were walking around after cookie, or around curfew, which is a daily thing at 7 pm. the documents didn t check, out they ran them through commuter bases, there are fake documents. this happens all the time. so, the feel of saboteurs israel. so hard to tell who s who.
pro nazi groups in world war ii. so, a lot of people got the message that bombing of the city was imminent. things like this. i can t call it a panic, but there is a mass exodus of people from the city. roads were absolutely jam-packed, as you know, odessa is barred from two or three sides. many came last night, there was a barge in the unexpectedly high numbers, and i like the others around here, you can see the background, spent the night in a one room church on bug beds, and so on, because they naturally are on edge, and they took this martial law warning to mean that the city was in danger. what are your plans now? where are you heading, what are you planning on doing? i ll be around here for a bit, we decided to go with the flow, and see what was going on outside of the city.