People wait in Lviv to board a train towards Poland as they flee Russia's invasion of Ukraine
(Picture: REUTERS)Another night interrupted by the chilling drone of the air raid sirens across the city. It’s become an everyday part of life here, but I’ll never get used to it; I’m not sure anyone could.
The first night they sounded, I leaped out of bed and looked out of my window to the apartment block across the street to see what others were doing.
An elderly couple were helping each other slowly down the stairs to the bunker. It’s now become a nightly habit to check on them every-time the sombre warning breaks our sleep.
Until a few days ago Lviv, in the west of Ukraine, was living something of a charmed life when compared to other major cities in this country.
That all changed on Saturday night. Airstrikes launched from the Black Sea hit a military base outside the city and killed 35 soldiers.
Hours earlier the Kremlin had declared Nato resupply routes fair game. To be honest, I’m surprised it took the Russians so long to target them. For weeks, weapons, aid and international volunteers have been flowing into Ukraine through its western borders with Poland and Romania. It has been a vital channel for the Ukrainian war effort, but if Russia wants to be victorious it will need to cut those routes off and strangle Ukraine’s war machine.
At a hospital near the base we watched ambulance after ambulance bring the wounded in.
By mid-morning the A&E was full so they were being transferred elsewhere. I noticed one man limping gingerly around the car park, a cigarette in his trembling hands and cuts to his head, looking up at the sky fearful of the next strike.
Whatever the outcome of this terrible war, this nation will never be quite the same again.
The churches and old buildings of this beautiful medieval city are now boarded up; stained glassed windows have been clad in metal and statues shrouded in protective cloth; Molotov cocktails hang outside restaurants and cafes and pedestrians share the pavements with walls of sandbags. Everyone here knows what has happened to Mariupol.
Ambulance arriving with wounded pic.twitter.com/B7byrooc46
— Alistair Bunkall (@AliBunkallSKY) March 13, 2022
Reports of progress in the peace talks have brought some hope, but I still don’t see how a deal is possible. Putin needs a ‘win’, but what can Zelensky agree on that won’t feel like a betrayal of his people? I ask our brilliant, brave fixer Oksana, only 25 but working all hours for us, away from her family who have remained in central Ukraine.
“Would you be happy to give Russia the Donbas region?” I suggest. “No,” she replies firmly.
“Crimea?” “No way!”
“How about neutrality?” “No Ali.”
Her stubbornness is entirely understandable and shared by all Ukrainians I’ve spoken to. They didn’t start this war, they didn’t want this war, so why should they lose part or all of their country just because a man in Moscow has decided he wants it?
* Alistair Bunkall is Sky News’s Middle East Correspondent, currently reporting on the Ukraine war in Lviv. @AliBunkallSKY.
