Many residents, and those arriving, hope the city is peripheral to Vladimir Putin’s plans for Ukraine
Life in Lviv is not completely untouched by the war. The town has not yet been the site of any fighting, but shops and restaurants are mostly shut and some have been boarded up. Long queues snake from every cash machine. Air-raid sirens blare during the day and a curfew begins at 10pm each night. Checkpoints have sprouted up on the city’s edges.
Some Ukrainians fleeing the fighting have opted to retreat to small towns and villages where relatives live, in the hope that the war passes them by. But for others Lviv is a better redoubt. Russian forces may not seek to occupy it at all and, if they do, it is close to Poland, ancountry that is welcoming Ukrainian refugees. But there is just one good road to Lviv from the capital, and traffic jams extend for kilometres. Some drivers are running out of fuel en route.
Long-term accommodation is hard to come by. Dmytro Hidulianov, a phone sales attendant, moved to Lviv from Kyiv days before war broke out. He complains about paying rent in two places, before pausing to wonder whether anyone will be collecting rent in Kyiv on March 1st. “I tried to book an apartment, they are really hard to find,” he says. He is paying nightly to stay in a pricey hotel . Despite the squeeze, prices have risen by only 10-20%, says Mariia, an estate agent.
But the Ukrainian government is not yet willing to retreat. The West is worried that by staying in Kyiv, top officials risk being killed—or forced under duress to agree to concessions they would never freely accept. But Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, is refusing to budge, saying he needs anti-tank ammunition, “not a ride”. Civil-society leaders in the capital are making plans to resist any government set up by Russia.
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