How Lviv feels the Ukraine war: far from the front and yet very close

In Lviv in western Ukraine, the war seems far away at first glance. The fighting is taking place far in the east of the country, and rockets rarely hit here. And yet the city is not spared the horrors of war.

There is snow on the paths of the Lychakivskyi cemetery. It’s a gray, cold winter day. The city’s celebrities are buried here, and there is also a Soviet memorial here. A new memorial will soon be added: for the soldiers from Lviv who have died since the Russian invasion. A new sector was specifically designated for them at the edge of the cemetery. Around 200 soldiers have been buried there since March and the number is increasing every month.

A boy and a friend stick small Ukrainian paper flags in the graves. “We think it’s right that we commemorate those who are fighting for our lives, our freedom, the freedom of Europe and the whole world,” he says. He and his friend came here on their own initiative, they don’t belong to any organization. “Each of them is a hero to us. Each of them gave their life so that we could live in peace and fight evil”.

Some of the dead were teenagers

Here they lie, the soldiers from Lviv. Some were teenagers, some just died a few days ago. Andriy died in June at the age of 26. His mother stands in front of his grave. “Whenever I have a free minute, I come here. I was only here on Tuesday, that was his name day. I brought him these sweets, he always liked them so much.”

She puts chocolate candies next to the tombstone. Above it hangs the scarf of Karpaty Lviv, Andriy’s beloved football club. “He was such a good boy, says his mother. Such a handsome boy. My child! I can’t survive this”.

Andriy was wounded at the Donbass front in the spring, she says. When he was being treated in a house, the Russian artillery fired on that very house. Andriy died in the flames. It took months for the mother to track down her son’s grave in Dnipro. In September his remains were taken to Lviv and reburied.

“We also feel the war”

The trauma specialist Oksana Nakonetschna knows many such cases. She heads a crisis intervention center in Lviv. “Nothing is as difficult as treating someone who has unexpectedly lost a loved one. It’s even harder with people whose loved ones are missing. They don’t know what happened to them.”

This afternoon, Oksana is sitting in a conference room in a hotel in Lviv. There she teaches an introductory course in trauma therapy. The influx is great. The need too. More than 200,000 people from other parts of Ukraine are said to have sought refuge in Lviv, many of them having experienced terrible things.

It’s around 1,200 kilometers from Lviv to Bakhmut in the Donbass. But the psychologist says: We too feel the war. “In the digital age, distance is relative. Sure, geographically speaking, we’re far away – but otherwise we’re close. War affects us through the people who come to us and are traumatized. When you talk to traumatized people, it leaves its mark on you, too. War comes to us through people, information, and occasionally through Russian missiles.”

Rocket strikes are rarer here than in Kyiv, for example. But there are always air raid alarms in Lviv as well. And because of recurrent power outages, the city is now as dark as others in Ukraine.

“Far from the front, but we are one country”

“We are far from the front in Lviv, but we are one country,” says Ivanka Dymyd Krypyakevych. She is the wife of a pastor. She also lost a son. His name was Artem, he lived to be 27. “Artem was a happy person, very happy. He learned everything new very easily, also the new weapon or any new things. He never said he couldn’t learn.”

Ivanka is sitting at her kitchen table, a wood-burning stove roars in the corner. Artem reported to the military in 2014 and fought in a special unit in Donbass. When the Russian invasion started, he was in Brazil. He took part in a skydiving competition there. Artem came home immediately. “He was here just five minutes. He packed his things and then went to the train. I just hugged him and wished him all the best.”

It was the last time Ivanka saw him. In June he was seriously injured in a Russian missile attack in the Cherson region and died shortly afterwards. “We were lucky, his comrades brought the corpse here straight away. It was here after two days. I know of cases in which people had to wait six months or more for the mortal remains.”

One last goodnight song for the son

Ivanka leafs through the photo album in which she has pasted pictures of Artem: from his vacation last year, when the world still seemed fine. And from his childhood. Ivanka and her husband taught their children to stand up for their values, she says. And Artem lived this conviction, in all consequence.

Her second son is now also in the army, helping with the air defense in Kyiv. Of course she’s afraid of losing him too. But parents need to understand that children make their own decisions. “Ukraine is defending Europe, just like the Cossacks did. We are the frontier of the civilized world. We told our children that too. But we never imagined that they would sacrifice their lives for it.”

At the funeral service for Artem, Ivanka sings in the church. “The little child is crying, oh, sleep, my child, I will rock this cradle”. It’s the last bedtime song for Artem, she’s standing next to his coffin. The video hit the internet, it was clicked on tens of thousands of times. At least they know that in Ukraine they are not alone in their pain.