site.btaBulgarians from Izmail: "We Lived Through Terrible Night - Explosions, Sounds of Drones Flying Over City"

"We lived through a terrible night - explosions and sounds of drones flying over the city," Bulgarians from the city of Izmail told BTA on Wednesday. On the night of August 2, Russian drones attacked the Ukrainian Danube city between 00:59 and 3:59 am. The Danube city of Izmail is in the Odessa region, on the border with Romania, and is home to one of Ukraine's largest river ports for grain transportation.

"We woke up from the first blasts. It was scary, our house was shaking from the blast waves. For three hours the whole city was in awful tension, constant explosions. It's a good thing we drove our daughter, who is still young, to the village. It's safer there," Anastasia Georgieva shared. She works at the Danube Shipping Company in the city, whose 12-storey building was hit and almost destroyed.

"We could save almost nothing. A lot of equipment, furniture, information were destroyed . We are currently looking for other buildings in the city to continue our activities," Georgieva added.

The chairman of the Izmail Bulgarian Society, Georgy Chilik, reported that there is a definite tension among the population after the night attacks. "Thank God there were no casualties. There is destruction of the port, infrastructure was damaged. Fortunately, our centre for national cultures in the city was not damaged. We are grateful to the Ukrainian air defence forces," Chilik added.

The Bulgarian community in the Odessa region is the third largest and numbers over 150,000 people according to the official 2001 census in Ukraine. The largest Bulgarian populations are concentrated in the Bolgrad, Izmail and Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi regions. Some 7,700 Bulgarians live in the city of Izmail, which is 10% of the total population in the city. As of 2022, Izmail has 69,932 inhabitants.