Hi Michael, you were in Lviv on Tuesday, close to the military camp that was attacked on Sunday. What did you find in the city?
‘Last week I planned to go to the base myself, where many foreign volunteers who want to fight for Ukraine would also come. Instead, I am now at the tragic capstone: the funeral of soldiers who died in the rocket attack. It was only about Ukrainian soldiers. We do not yet know whether foreign volunteers have also died.
‘The funeral was in a cathedral in Lviv. That is where religion, nationalism and war come together. There was a yellow-blue painted Jesus statue with pictures of all the victims around it. The cathedral was completely filled with family and high-ranking military personnel.
‘Besides all the national pride, there is the personal suffering. A young man, a brother of one of the victims, could not stand it anymore when the grave was filled in. In the military cemetery you can also see the tragedy of wars in Ukraine. You can read that from the years of death: 1918, 1940, 2014 and now again 2022.’
Western Ukraine has long been seen as relatively safe. Are residents of Lviv more anxious after Sunday?
“During mass in the cathedral, the air-raid siren went off. I was there with my fixer, who helps me and translates for me. He feels very responsible for me, so we went straight to the bomb shelter. I think 95 percent of the visitors just stayed in the cathedral. It would be very cruel: a shelling of a funeral. But there were many soldiers present. You never know what could happen.
‘You don’t notice much fear on the street either. Residents of Lviv really don’t think they are immune to the war, but they go on living. I estimate that about 80 percent of people stay outside. It also doesn’t help that all sirens until now have been false alarms.
‘You can feel the war, but people don’t always act like it. If you go to other cities, it will of course be different. I noticed that from the huge flow of refugees I saw when I crossed the border. All those thousands of people are individuals who had a normal life just over two weeks ago.’
Where refugees leave, foreign volunteers come to fight. What kind of people are those?
‘I myself have only spoken to professionals, people with military experience who come here. Like an Englishman who fought in Afghanistan. But there are also many inexperienced forces who have come here from a certain idealism.
“But that doesn’t work at all,” said the English soldier. Because they are so inexperienced and have no equipment of their own, the Ukrainian authorities have to go to great lengths to guide them. That costs time and money that would be better spent in our own army. They ask for more than they can deliver.
The question is what Sunday’s attack will do to the morale of foreign volunteers. It is therefore still unclear whether any of them are dead. It is likely that there were many inexperienced forces in the camp. They follow a two-week training there and were probably not sent to the front yet.’
After Lviv you travel to the southern port city of Odessa. Why are you going there?
‘The journey to Odessa alone is an almost surreal experience. While the country is at war, the night train from Lviv to the port is still running. On time. That says something about what kind of war this is. The front is very porous. Not everywhere is fighting. In some places, little of the war is visible.
‘In Odessa I am curious about the preparations for the possible invasion of the Russian troops. They are still about 100 kilometers away from Mykolaiv, the city is under heavy fire. The remaining civilians in Odessa are more combative than ever. They have almost literally dug themselves in. I hope to discover where that pride and fighting spirit come from.’