Lviv - birthplace of Ukrainian nationalism

Vladimir Putin denies the very concept of a national Ukrainian identity. Benedict Anderson conceptualised the modern nation-state as an imagined community in his famous 1983 book Imagined Communities. During the time of the Habsburg Empire Ukrainians were influenced by the nationalism that spread after the French Revolution. The first seeds were sown. The Revolutions of 1848 in the Austrian Empire inspired the founding of the Supreme Ruthenian Council in the city we now call Lviv (Львів). One of the three political requests was that lectures in schools and publishing of government statements needed to be conducted in the Ukrainian language.

From the Supreme Ruthenian Council (1848 - 1851) to the breakup of the Sovjet Union, Ukrainian nationalism survived – between 1917 - 1918; 1918 - 1921 there was even a short-lived Ukrainian People's Republic. In 1991 an independent Ukraine was formed when the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic was dissolved. Not based on ethnicity but as a modern Ukrainian state and pluralistic citizenship laws.

“Fight — and you’ll be victorious,
God is helping you!
On your side is justice, on your side is glory,
And holy liberty!”

— "The Caucasus", Taras Shevchenko, 1845

Lviv is a very modern bustling city with a population well over 700.000, almost as big as Kraków.

I arrived in Lviv after sunset. My hotel was right on Svobody Avenue. The entrance was inside a luxurious shopping mall. Signs with red arrows pointed at the shelter in the basement in case of an air raid. Since 2022 twelve civilians were killed and thirty-two wounded during dozens of attacks on Lviv Oblast.

I was pretty hungry so I entered the first beer pub I saw, the White Lion pub (Білий Лев, Lesi Ukrainky vul. 15). They served smoked pig’s ears as a beer snack and they lend me a paperclip to remove my physical sim card so I could be sure my data went through eSIM.

Soon I discovered Piana Vyshnia (“Drunk Cherry”), a tiny little place selling sweet but not too sweet cherry liqueur. Most of the action was on the street. I was mesmerised by the singing, and two pints of beer and two cherry liqueurs helped lift my mood. I filmed in vertical video format for Instagram.

I have been to regions of conflict before, Kosova in 1991 among others, Serbias had full and direct control of the province, tanks guarded the border, but never to a country which is under martial law. I have often wondered whether I would be able to fight, would I show valour or would I run to the hills? This question cannot easily be answered. In Lviv I was observing people of fighting age. For them the question is not hypothetical.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy sees the need to mobilise more citizens. The average age of the Ukrainian solider is 43 years at the moment of writing. His commanders have asked for up to 500,000 extra soldiers, but this is hard to finance. For each fighting soldier you need six extra people working to pay for that one soldier. Zelenskyy has to find 3 million extra jobs to even make this possible.

Still, every man, or even woman, in Ukraine knows there could be a moment he or she will be asked to serve, possibly on the front. A bill on mobilisation is now discussed in Ukraine's parliament. At the same time conscripts who have served since before the full-scale invasion began are now being discharged and won’t be called up for 12-months. Zelenskyy promised rotation in his speech when he removed general Valery Zaluzhny as commander-in-chief in February.

When curfew was about to start the crowd started singing this song. I didn’t have time yet to ask somebody what song this is and what the lyrics mean.

Lemberg

When Lviv fell under the Habsburg monarchy the city was known as Lemberg and saw a large influx of Austrians and German-speaking Czech bureaucrats. The city became quite Austrian by the mid 19th century. You can still find the Viennese Coffee House in the city center (12 Svobody Avenue), which was established over a hundred years ago. I ordered the ‘business lunch’ menu which consisted of a beet salad, a very good borscht and a Wiener Schnitzel as flat as a sheet of paper: perfect.

Slavik’s Fashion

One moment the war is invisible, the next moment you are looking at portraits of men who very recently died in battle. President Zelenskyy announced in February 2024 that 31,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed in action since 2022.

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Memorial of the Heavenly Hundred Heroes

This memorial, built in 2019, is a reminder that upraising of the Ukrainian people against corruption, oligarchs and Russian influence started more than ten years ago, and consequentially the annexing of Crimea by Russia and the war in Donbas. The memorial is to commemorate the people who lost their lives during the Euromaidan protests in 2013 and 2014. Address: Pidvalna St, 6, Lviv.

The protest did not start in Kyiv, but in Lviv when in November 2013 mayor Sadovy called for students to go on a strike and protest. Shortly afterwards tens on thousands young Ukrainians travelled to Kyiv from West-Ukraine to the now famous Maidan Nezalezhnosti square. In January 2014 protesters occupied the regional government building in Lviv. This led to the storming of regional government buildings all over Ukraine. It still angers me when right (and left) wing idiots claim Euromaidan was a CIA sponsored coup. Lviv as cradle for Euromaidan is argued for by Dutch journalist Michiel Driebergen in this article dated 3 February 2014.

Children on a school trip visiting the memorial.

This statue below depicts merchant and translator Yuri-Franz Kulchytsky. He became a hero in the defence of Vienna from the Turks. As a rewards he received 300 sacks of coffee. When Austria ruled Galicia in late 18th century, coffee culture spread to Lviv and today Kulchytsky, a native of a region near Lviv (back then the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, today Ukraine), is seen as the man who brought coffee to Central Europe, which is most likely not true. But it makes a nice story and a cool statue. Today Lviv has many coffee houses in the style of a Wiener Kaffeehaus.

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Lviv Railway Station

My final destination would be Kyiv, the capital and seat of government. My train to Kyiv left at 11:05 pm and would arrive the next morning at 06:19 am at Kyiv-Pasazhyrskyi railway station. Many trains run at night. The sleeping carriages are still heated by coal. The night time atmosphere at the railway station is amazing, the smell of coal, the long trains, up to 17 carriages, the big Soviet era locomotives, it’s unforgettable.

I probably bought a first class ticket because my compartment had only two beds. I bought my ticket online before my journey. It was quite a comfortable night.

The situation of the war shortly before my visit. The front is roughly 500 kilometres distance from Kyiv.

Kyiv and the quest for independence

The Orange Revolution of 2004 and 2005 was a revolution for independence. Not because Ukraine wasn’t an independent state, it was. But because the population was alarmed by reports of election interference during the election between the pro-Europe candidate Viktor Yushchenko and Viktor Yanukovych. After a revote, on 10 January 2005, the Election Commission officially declared Yushchenko the winner of the presidential election. He would remain president of Ukraine for 10 years.

In 2010 Viktor Yanukovych won the election of that year in his second attempt to become president. The Orange Revolution was later overshadowed by ‘Maidan’ in 2013 and 2014 when the people took to the street again after President Viktor Yanukovych suddenly decided not to sign the European Union–Ukraine Association Agreement.

I remember the 2016 Dutch referendum on the Association Agreement very well. I voted in favour of it. Only 32,28% of Dutch voters bothered to vote. 61% voted against the Agreement, partly due to Russian interference. Michiel van Hulten, former chairman of the PvdA, and publicist Joshua Livestro led the campaign in favour of the agreement: They would later state: “No one realized that we were on the front line of an information war.”

Further reading: Sandworm A New Era of Cyberwar and the Hunt for the Kremlin's Most Dangerous Hackers, by Andy Greenberg,

I arrived in Kyiv very early in the morning. My hotel was practically on Maidan Nezalezhnosti, so I got off the metro at Khreshchatyk. The first thing I noticed was a giant sea of blue and yellow flags on Maidan. The square was still empty except for one girl sitting on a corner next to the flags, headphones on, and crying. With lack of sleep because of the night train, I was fighting to hold back my own tears.

Among the fallen soldiers are many from the volunteer unit International Legion. Jonathan Sheng-Guang Tseng left Taiwan to fight for Ukraine. His decision has to be seen in the context of the tensions between China and Taiwan. He must have recognised the similarities between Taiwan and Ukraine. He was only 25 when he was killed in action. Likewise the Georgian National Legion has been fighting on the side of Ukraine since in the war in Donbas.

It was too early to check into my hotel so I just dropped off my bag and started exploring Kyiv on foot. The old city is built on a hill, but nothing remains of the old medieval street plan. Roads are wide and long. When the capital of Ukraine was moved to Kyiv in 1934 the Soviet government carried out a ‘reconstruction’ of the historical center of the capital. St. Michael's Golden-Domed Monastery, dating back to the 12th century, was demolished between 1935 and 1937. In 1941 Stalin’s Red Army mined the city center and detonated these when the Wehrmacht marched into the city. One square kilometre around Khreshchatyk street was completely destroyed. The city center was rebuild in Neoclassical Stalinist architectural style.

One building the Soviets didn’t demolish is the Saint Sophia Cathedral. The cathedral was most likely founded in 1011 by Vladimir the Great.

Mykhailivska Square

This square in central Kyiv is now a permanent destroyed Russian military equipment exhibition, but on Ukrainian Railway Day a shelled train carriage was put on display. On this cold February morning the square was mostly devoid of people.

Below the remains of an OTR-21 Tochka (NATO name: SS-21 Scarab) missile. Being a Soviet missile, both Russia and Ukraine have this missile in their arsenal.

The SS-21 on Russian launch vehicles.

Below the rebuilt St. Michael's Golden-Domed Monastery. The cathedral reopened in 1999.

View from Mykhailivska Square before the St. Michael's Golden-Domed Monastery was demolished by the Soviets. The photo was made in the early 1900s.

What was started in 2004 with the Orange Revolution continues to this day. As long as Russia continues the war against Ukraine, true independence cannot be celebrated. Currently Kyiv is in a battle for survival, no matter how far away the war front is. Its wounds are mostly invisible. 80% of the population of Ukraine have a close relative who has been wounded or killed, and an estimated 12 million Ukrainians are suffering from war trauma. Invisible Wounds.

ORCS MUST DIE, a reference to J. R. R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. Orcs were the primary soldiers of both Dark Lords' armies: Morgoth and Sauron. Dehumanization is a prerequisite for killing.

Kyiv has some very good lunchrooms. I had a glass of very good Ukrainian wine, and Kyiv borsch served with pampushka stuffed with meat (260 UAH) at Glek (Глек), 6 Velyka Zhytomyrska Street. The borsch is made with porcini mushrooms, smoked pear, red Carpathian beans.

Poster for Azov, the Azov Battalion was founded in 2014 as a volunteer unit in reaction to the Russian backed forces in Donbas. It was formally incorporated into the National Guard just half a year later and is now know as the Azov Regiment. The Azov Movement was created by the military unit and has drawn attention because of its ties with far-right movements. Putin has used Azov as a justification for his special operation to de-nazify Ukraine. The Azov Regiment is now considered to be largely depoliticised.

Entrance to a Kyiv army surplus store. You are meant to use this Russian military jacket as a doormat. I visited quite a lot of army surplus stores out of personal interest. The official uniform has a MM-14 camouflage pattern and is easy to recognise.

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In the evening I had dinner in Pervak. I ended up ordering a few dishes, one dish was chicken Kyiv, around a big glass of beer. They served horseradish shots alongside the beer. The place was not busy.

New city marketing slogan: Kyiv is waiting for you after the victory! I was just thinking: “Why wait?”

When I arrived in Kyiv I bought a return ticket leaving at 6:19 in the morning. Soon I discovered that would be a problem considering curfew ended at 5 am in the morning. It could be enough time to reach Kyiv-Pasazhyrskyi railway station in time from my hotel, but I had no idea how overwhelmed the taxi system would be just after curfew. I decided I couldn’t risk missing my train, and therefore my flight in Kraków, so prepared for leaving my hotelroom in the evening to spend the whole night at the railway station. This wasn’t ideal and I swooped up the last seat/bed in a train leaving at 02:57 am in the morning. This would cut my waiting time in a cold and dark railway station by 3,5 hours.

I spent my last day in Kyiv taking the metro to the metro end stations and walking the streets of central Kyiv.

Lisova terminus station of the Sviatoshynsko-Brovarska Line.

Donation box for the 3rd Separate Assault Brigade next to a heavily damaged vehicle of the unit. They need a new car to keep fighting. In the background: Azovstal. Free Mariupol Defenders. The Azovstal Iron and Steel Works was the last holdout during the Siege of Mariupol in March 2022. About 1500 Azovstal defenders are still captured by the Russians.

Besarabsky Market - 1912

The landscape between Kyiv and Lviv from my train window.

Arriving back in Lviv

There are trains running between Lviv and Poland but I couldn’t buy a ticket using my app. So I booked another bus, this time directly to Kraków. The bus left at 00:40 am, so I had to be at the bus station before curfew. We drove all night and spent three hours at the Ukrainian-Polish border. This time customs was more strict and my bag was searched for military stuff. When the customs officer discovered my Putin toilet paper I bought as a souvenir, she smiled and the search was over.

“ПТН ПНХ”

— Putin khuylo (Putin dickhead)