When two Russian missiles on Shabbos struck Lviv – the largest city in western Ukraine and one that so far has been spared the worst of the war’s violence – alarm bells went off beyond the war zone.
In the month since Russia invaded Ukraine, the relatively safe city near the Polish border has been transformed into a hub for diplomats and international aid agencies. It’s become a destination for many of the millions of Ukrainians displaced from their homes, and a transit point for many of the roughly 3.5 million Ukrainians, mainly women and children, made refugees by the war.
Lviv Mayor Andriy Sadovyi said the March 26 strikes were Russian President Vladimir Putin wanting “to say hello” to President Biden, who hours later forcefully condemned Putin in an address from Warsaw, some 250 miles away.
As the assault on Ukraine stretches into its second month, here’s what to know about Lviv, the Ukrainian city that’s become a pillar of support and refuge for a country at war.
Lviv, today some 40 miles from the Polish border, has been an epicenter of Ukrainian nationalism and culture.
“Kyiv is the heart of Ukraine and Lviv is the soul,” Sadovyi told The Washington Post in mid-February.
The city was officially founded in 1256 and has changed hands many times since. Modern-day Lviv has maintained some medieval, baroque, Renaissance and classic architecture. Lviv’s old town has been named a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage Site.
Despite its shifting rulers, over the centuries Lviv developed a reputation as a multicultural city with deep Ukrainian roots. Lviv began the 20th century in the Galicia region of Poland, which was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. After World War I and the empire’s dissolution, Lviv returned to Polish rule only to be incorporated into the Soviet Union during World War II, when it was also briefly conquered by Nazi Germany. Before World War II, about one-third of the city’s population was Jewish and it was also an epicenter of Orthodox churches. Throughout these periods, the city maintained ties with Ukrainian nationalist and intellectual movements.
When the Soviet Union fell in 1991, Lviv became a part of an independent Ukraine. Now western Ukraine’s largest city, it also absorbed many Ukrainians displaced from their homes in the east after war broke out between Kyiv and Moscow and its allies in 2014.
In the weeks before Russia’s invasion, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky sought to downplay the prospect of war. But some Ukrainians and international workers started relocating to Lviv anyway as a precaution.
As momentum toward war grew in February, the United States temporarily moved its embassy to Lviv for “the safety of our staff,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a Feb. 14 announcement. A handful of other embassies did the same.
Zelensky criticized the move as adding to the drumbeat of war. He warned, perhaps now presciently, that if war did break out, “it will be everywhere.”
“You cannot be away from the escalation or problems in five, six hours,” he said, referencing the time it then took to drive from Kyiv to Lviv. Now the trip, if one can make it, is hours longer and precarious.
Many countries, including the United States, have since removed diplomatic staff.
While hundreds of Russian missiles have fallen on other Ukrainian cities, Lviv has been hit just twice so far. The first time was March 18, when Russian missiles struck an area near Lviv’s airport, about four miles from the city center. The second was on Saturday, when Russia said it targeted military sites using both long-range and high-precision missiles. Lviv’s mayor said a fuel storage facility was destroyed.
Life in Lviv has been upended in countless ways as it went from being a hub for tourism to one for the displaced.
For weeks, Lviv’s train station has been filled with packed trains arriving and people looking for tickets out of Ukraine or a connection to elsewhere in the western part of the country. Hotels, restaurants and residents opened their doors to offer free rooms or food to the war-weary arrivals.
Across the city, Ukrainians have quickly mobilized, turning everything from homes to museums into humanitarian command centers for organizing evacuations, donations and emergency aid. Others have focused on connecting the displaced with food, shelter, clothes, medical care and child care. Still others have seized the opportunity to combat Russian disinformation online. Long-term accommodations in the city are full.
(c) 2022, The Washington Post · Miriam Berger
{Matzav.com}
We Americans are responsible for this destruction.
We, who are bribing the Ukrainian politicians to continue fighting by giving them billions in expensive weaponry which they then sell on the black market, are causing the Ukrainians to continue resisting.
Call your elected officials and tell them you are appalled that our tax money is being used to fuel a war that has NOTHING to do with us. Ukraine would have surrendered immediately if not for American meddling. Thousands of Ukrainians and Russians would now have been alive had we not meddled. Millions of refugees could have instead been living at home had we not meddled. The only difference would have been flag colors; instead of Ukrainian flags there would have been Russian flags. Blood is on OUR hands!
Our “War on Terror” cost 9 TRILLION dollars and nearly a million lives, and left us in a worse position than we started in (ISIS and Shia militias running amok in Iraq).
And we still haven’t learned our lesson! Stay out of foreign wars!
Chaim’l, “The war on Terror” started because the US was attacked on 9/11, it was NOT a foreign war. Ukrainians are fighting back because THEY want to defend THEIR country and their right to govern themselves. US offered Zelensky a way out right in the beginning of this but he refused and bravely stayed on to lead the defense of his nation. Both Ukraine and Russia have bloody histories and are not exactly friends of our people and the average Ukrainian’s ancestor is likely some murderous cossack, pogromer, or einsatzgrouper. Having said that, times have changed and many Jewish lives are at stake. Besides, I the world allows a country to just walk in and take over their neighbor then… today it’s Ukraine, tomorrow it’s other European countries, and the next day the world. Maybe you want a different color flag hanging in your backyard…
Who writes the fabricated articles for the Washington Post? Biden was in the neighborhood like you were there. Putin is well aware that Biden is no president of the US.
The Expose: Ukrainian Forces Want to Surrender and Azov Forces (a unit of the National Guard of Ukraine) Started Shooting At Them – They Are At War With Each Other
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ wife told Mark Meadows that ‘the Biden crime family’ and ‘ballot fraud co-conspirators’ would be ‘living in barges off GITMO to face military tribunals for sedition,’ texts show
“Biden crime family & ballot fraud co-conspirators (elected officials, bureaucrats, social media censorship mongers, fake stream media reporters, etc) are being arrested & detained for ballot fraud right now & over coming days, & will be living in barges off GITMO to face military tribunals for sedition,” Thomas wrote in a message on November 5, 2020, two days after the presidential election, according to the Post.
“Watermarked ballots in over 12 states have been part of a huge Trump & military white hat sting operation in 12 key battleground states,” she said.
https://www.businessinsider.com/ginni-thomas-thought-biden-crime-family-would-be-sent-to-barges-off-gitmo-2022-3
Clarence Thomas the only judge not cv’d was recently hospitalized from poisoning. Deep State trying to get rid of him.
Lviv is also the city where mass pogroms were perpetrated upon its large Jewish population, right when the Soviets retreated in 1941, and BEFORE the German forces entered the city. The local Ukrainians were the murderers, and they continued doing what they do best, during the German occupation. They were worse than the Germans, who were officially only following orders, and got heavily indoctrinated with Jew-hatred since 1933. The Ukrainians, on the other hand, have been drinking up that hatred with their mothers’ milk, for centuries, and always acted on it, with devastating results.
The city is the very center of Ukrainian nationalism, xenophobia, and rabid antisemitism. Now, am I supposed to feel bad for the Ukrainians, especially the ones from Lviv?
Chaim’l, “The war on Terror” started because the US was attacked on 9/11, it was NOT a foreign war. Ukrainians are fighting back because THEY want to defend THEIR country and their right to govern themselves. US offered Zelensky a way out right in the beginning of this but he refused and bravely stayed on to lead the defense of his nation. Both Ukraine and Russia have bloody histories and are not exactly friends of our people and the average Ukrainian’s ancestor is likely some murderous cossack, pogromer, or einsatzgrouper. Having said that, times have changed and many Jewish lives are at stake. Besides, I the world allows a country to just walk in and take over their neighbor then… today it’s Ukraine, tomorrow it’s other European countries, and the next day the world. Maybe you want a different color flag hanging in your backyard…