Lviv letter: UNESCO world heritage city remains a relatively tranquil haven from war

 LVIV – It is hard at first glance for a visitor to believe that this dazzlingly beautiful western Ukrainian UNESCO world heritage site is a city at war. Indeed, some of its bourgeois citizens evidently prefer to keep out of sight as much as possible reminders of the conflict being fought valiantly against the Russian invading forces in the distant east of Ukraine.

 That allegedly is reflected in ambiguous attitudes to the legion of returning Lviv servicemen who return from the front as amputees, but rather than receiving a hero’s welcome some are shunned by many of the city’s great and the good as "losers," many of whom have to travel to neighbouring Poland to obtain prosthetic limbs, insiders say.

 “Many people here don’t want to see veterans without legs or arms.  They interfere with their idea that they can get on with their lives without the war disturbing their comfortable routines,” a western diplomat says. “It’s part of the dark side of Lviv, like the significant number of young people from middle class families still managing to dodge the draft by sleeping at a different address every night.”

 Before the nightly curfew, tourists from other parts of Ukraine still are guided around the magnificent squares of Lviv, which resembles a smaller version of Paris with dashes of Kyiv, Prague and Cracow deliciously thrown in, enhancing the mainly peaceful atmosphere visible in the city’s many open air restaurants and cafés.

 In one central square, soldiers at a stand mounted by a downed Iranian shard drone and other Russian munitions collect generous donations of paper money from citizens for the armed forces. And at 9 a.m. each day loudspeakers in every street call citizens to stand up to attention for a minute of silence to honour Ukraine’s war dead. Hardly a day passes without bystanders going on their knees on pavements during a funeral procession through the centre for the latest war casualty among Lviv’s many sons at the front.

 At my hotel, part of a western chain, most guests are middle aged soldiers enjoying leave from the front-line areas, many of them with their wives. Beefy. cheerful men in their 40s, 50s and even 60s, they are testimony to the older generation of Ukrainians’ impressive willingness to bear the brunt of much of the fighting and spare young people under 25 who are not subject to conscription.

 I was relieved that no Russian drones or missiles disturbed my brief sojourn. Nevertheless some long term residents look haggard from the considerable number of alerts, typically between 2 a.m. and 4 a.m. that disturb their sleep, when the city’s infrastructure does come under air attack. Most drones are shot down by the city's good air defences, but the racket inevitably jars on inhabitants' nerves.

 “You are more likely to be run over by a car in Krakow than to be hit by a drone in Lviv,” an American who commutes to Lviv for work each week tells me in the Polish city.

 The relative safety means Lviv still has a sizeable expatriate community including volunteers teaching English to the children of refugees displaced from Donbas and other occupied or front line areas. Francesca Mancini, a photographer from Rome, has become an effective ambassador for Italian and western culture at the Lviv Polytechnic where as the only foreign member of the academic staff she has presided over a multi-media project for the past six months, remaining doughtily despite the university being hit by Russian drones.

 "I love this hospitable city and the charming Ukrainian people," she says, "sometimes there are bad nights during air raid alerts, one cannot sleep, but I hope to stay here for the foreseeable future." 

 A Turkish businessman running a real estate agency says that 90 percent of his foreign clients are still Westerners looking to acquire beautiful young Ukrainian wives who they have met online through one of Ukraine’s many matrimonial agencies.

 “The difference is that they used to buy property here but since the invasion they are only renting,” he says. “They still come here mainly looking for women in one form or other whatever other excuse they tell you.”

 It’s soon time for me to get on my coach for the night trip back to Krakow to resume my Polish classes at the Jagellonian university.  Long journeys by land have become normal for most Ukrainians since civilian air services were suspended after the Russian invasion.

 On my coach ride across the Polish border from Krakow my young Ukrainian neighbour, Ira, tells me of the odyssey she was undertaking to return to her home after a holiday with a friend in Sardinia. Once we arrived in Lviv she was taking a 13 hour overnight train to central Ukraine, just one more way in which Vladimir Putin has disjointed lives of civilians even far from the front, without managing to crush or even dent the Ukrainians' indomitable spirit of resistance.

 jp