![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/CM6JJLC5KLJGCGSHF3HN.jpg\")
The historic centre of Lviv in Ukraine. Picture: iStock<\/p>\nThis time in Ukraine: Wick charity worker Chris McIvor returns to Lviv where he previously spent a few months close to the start of the war<\/p>\n
The historic centre of Lviv in Ukraine. Picture: iStock<\/p>\n
The city of Lviv in western Ukraine has a long and checkered past. The history books date an ancient settlement to some 1000 years ago, functioning as a market for the rich agricultural produce of the region.<\/p>\n
Both its wealth and its position on the confluence of several major trade routes meant that it was coveted by different invaders, including the Mongols, Ottomans and even the Swedes in the 18th century, who held it for several years.<\/p>\n
For much of its more recent history it was governed by the Austro-Hungarian empire and then seceded to Poland after the First World War. It came under German occupation for several years and then Soviet control once the war concluded.<\/p>\n
Its former liberal and tolerant politics had attracted a significant population of around 250,000 Jews when war broke out but only a few thousand survived the nearby death camp of Belzec set up specifically to exterminate the inhabitants of the Lviv ghetto.<\/p>\n
When the Soviet Union collapsed and Ukraine gained independence in 1991, Lviv became the administrative capital of western Ukraine, with a population of around 700,000 people.<\/p>\n
Today its position, rather than constituting a liability as in the past, has shielded it from the worst of the current war. Unlike the eastern cities of Ukraine, many of which like Kharkiv and Mariupol have experienced considerable destruction, its distance from the front line has meant that it is only sporadically attacked.<\/p>\n
![\"Ukrainian](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/3383TOVCIXXCMGVL7V4B.jpg\")
Ukrainian soldiers have been fighting for more than four years. Picture: iStock<\/p>\n
Some 70 people have been killed in the city as a result of Russian missiles and drones, although as I experienced during my recent visit, regular air-raid alarms take place which necessitate taking shelter. As a relative hub of safety in the country, it now hosts the majority of internally displaced people who have fled from elsewhere, swelling the population of the city by an estimated 200,000.<\/p>\n
Three years ago, when I was based in Lviv for a few months<\/a>, the war was still in its infancy. You could see signs that it was present on the billboards that dotted the city calling for recruits to defend the country. At the entrance to many of the city\u2019s numerous churches there were pictures of men from Lviv who had died in the fighting and in the central cemetery outside our office every day there was the sound of bugles and drums commemorating the latest fallen soldier.<\/p>\n Then, as now, no one expressed any doubts that the war would be won given the determination of the Ukrainian people to resist the invasion for as long as was necessary. But I do not think they expected that over four years later, after a period longer than Russia\u2019s involvement in the Second World War, the same scenario of death and destruction would still be continuing.<\/p>\n The consequences of the war and what it has meant for people here are more evident today. The photographs of fallen soldiers now extend beyond the entrance of churches to public parks where their short biographies are displayed.<\/p>\n On the walls of homes and apartment blocks you will find similar pictures of men and women who once lived in these buildings and will not be returning. The cemeteries have expanded too with graves, crosses and flags now pushing beyond what was once planned for or even more recently expected.<\/p>\n On one of the roads out of Lviv I counted the hollowed-out shells of several factories now abandoned, not because of bombs or missiles but because the Ukraine economy has collapsed to a point where what they once produced is no longer commercially viable.<\/p>\n The beautiful, historic buildings of old Lviv have faded since I was last here, largely because the paint, cement and labour required to renovate their exteriors have been diverted to locations where destruction is more evident and the needs probably greater.<\/p>\n For some of the older people I met at the premises of an association they had formed in a small town west of Lviv, largely comprised of refugees who had escaped from the fighting several years ago, I detected this time a deeper resignation that they would never be going back to where they came from.<\/p>\n \u201cEven if the war stopped tomorrow, what would we go back to? Our homes have been destroyed. Our families and friends have disappeared. Nothing is left of the communities we once belonged to,\u201d said Nadia, who came from a village now under Russian occupation.<\/p>\n Although local solidarity towards those who have been displaced is still evident, she has also recognised that after four years of being a refugee in another location, attitudes towards them seem less welcoming than before.<\/p>\n More from Chris McIvor:<\/p>\n \u2022 Choosing hope over hatred as people in Ukraine help each other cope<\/a><\/p>\n \u2022 Reflections from Warsaw: Are lessons from ghettos of the past being ignored by populist politics?<\/a><\/p>\n![\"Chris](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/8RUQBRUJX472BVDKYT1A.jpg\")
Chris McIvor, from Wick, returned to Lviv recently.<\/p>\n