Travelling to Ukraine used to be easy, but the airspace was closed when Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine began. Some smaller airports near the border have seen a lot of new business. Jasionka is the closest airport to Rzeszów, a town 90 kilometres away from the Polish-Ukrainian border. Previously it only served LOT’s feeder flights to Warsaw and the occasional charter plane carrying holidaymakers to Sharm El Sheikh. Today, it handles planes operated by international airlines and military aircraft from Ukraine’s allies. There’s even one direct flight a week to New York City. The airport itself resembles a fortress, with three Patriot defence systems protecting the airfield – two from Norway, one from Germany.
Ukrainian coach services, too, have adapted to the situation. There’s a connection almost every hour between Jasionka and Lviv, a major city in western Ukraine. Online booking is easy and the service itself is mostly reliable. That’s not a given considering the strict Polish border controls, often leading to hours of delays. My personal record is 13 hours of waiting. On this trip, though, things run smoothly – my coach is cleared to cross the border within two hours. Most of the other passengers are women and their children who have found refuge somewhere in Europe and are now returning to visit friends and family. I am the only non-Ukrainian passenger. En route, we pass several long military convoys carrying armoured vehicles into Ukraine.
Lviv is around 75 kilometres from the border. The first objects we see are anti-tank obstacles from the first few days of the war. At the time no one could have predicted how fast the Russian troops would advance – and since the disastrous defeats sustained by the Russian army near Kyiv and Kharkiv, the obstacles have lain abandoned. While Russian tanks are not a threat, Russian missiles and drones certainly are. Air raids happen almost daily.
Lviv is as beautiful as ever. I’ve been coming here regularly for 20 years. Our coach passes the historic “onion layers” of the city – Soviet housing blocks built during the Brezhnev and Khrushchev eras; buildings in the international modernist style between World Wars 1 and 2; a ring of historicism and art nouveau structures built during the Austro-Hungarian empire; and finally the medieval city centre. Lviv has been home to people of many nations, including Poles, Jews, Ukrainians, Germans, Armenians and many more. The city is European in the narrowest sense, and so the title of European Youth Capital is entirely deserved. The tragedy is that it took a war to remind Europe what it also is: not just Berlin, Paris or Madrid, but also Lviv.
“You are not alone. You are never alone!”
Next morning, I wake to sunshine and mild spring temperatures. From the balcony of my hotel room, I see large groups of young people walking past. In honour of its title as European Youth Capital, Lviv’s city council has put on a major programme of workshops and cultural events that draw young people from all over the country. Later, I hear that the trains have been full beyond capacity with young people flocking here. But even without the activities, Lviv is a city of young people. It’s home to several large universities and colleagues, with young people coming from all over the country to study here. They are a recognisable presence in the many trendy cafés, restaurants and galleries across the city.
The festivities in honour of Lviv’s title of European Youth Capital 2025 are being held in the city’s impressive opera house, designed by Viennese architects Fellner and Helmer. When it was built, the city was still known as Lemberg and formed part of the Austro-Hungarian empire. As befits our impressive surroundings, the audience is dressed to the nines, unlike me, who is feeling somewhat underdressed. I strike up a conversation with the people sitting next to me, two young Lithuanians from the country’s youth council and a Pole who has established “science clubs” for young people from across Europe. However, I don’t see any other Germans.
We then listen to a series of formal addresses from key European institutions – the Parliament, the Commission, the European Youth Forum, and the Council of Europe. There’s also remarks from a representative of UNICEF, which has provided funding to Ukraine’s youth centres, the Ukrainian minister of youth, the Ukrainian communications minister and many more. The whole event is a large-scale demonstration of European solidarity.
The speaker who grabs most of my attention and that of the audience is Matjaž Gruden, Director of Democracy at the Council of Europe, in his capacity also responsible for youth affairs. He is a Slovenian national with a clear memory of the early days of the war in Yugoslavia. In his address, he recalls how as a small boy he was awoken by air-raid sirens early in the morning and how his parents struggled to explain to him what it all meant. While Slovenia was only at war for a few days, Lviv has been in a state of war for more than three years. And yet the audience understands Gruden’s message, the gist of which is quite simple: “You are not alone. You are never alone!” The evening event is European integration brought to life.
Many of the speakers make mention of what happened to activist Yaryna Bazylevych, the manager of the European Youth Capital project. She, her two sisters and her mother were killed by a Russian missile attack on Lviv on 4 September 2024. She was 21.
“That’s how young people are experiencing the war”
Next day, there is just one official event on the agenda: a commemorative service in the garrison church in honour of those who fell or were killed during the war. I use the rest of the day to hold interviews. My first interviewee, who I meet with for breakfast, is Natalia Shevchuk from the National Youth Council of Ukraine. We’ve known each other for years but this is our first meeting face to face. My first question sounds clumsy. How are young people experiencing the war? “I can answer that,” says Natalia. “Remember I once put you in touch with Ivan Paramonov so you could interview him? He’s dead, fallen in the Donbas. That’s how young people are experiencing the war.”
In the afternoon, I meet up with Andriy Moskalenko, the deputy mayor of Lviv. He and his team are responsible for the European Youth Capital project on the city council side and have evidently done a good job. I’m grateful he can make time for me despite his busy schedule. A helmet with bullet holes is lying on his desk. I ask him if it’s from the Maidan Uprising of 2014. No, says Andriy, “it’s from the war.” I ask him what the title of European Youth Capital means to him. “It means Europe is looking towards us,” he says.
The evening service in the garrison church attracts so many people I can’t even get close, so I return the next day. I like this church. The Soviets turned it into an archive; later, it was the last church in Lviv to be restored to a Christian community. The restoration works are still ongoing, which is part of the appeal of this gorgeous baroque structure. The church is used by the local military, seeing as Lviv is a major military site. This is where services of worship are held for soldiers about to go into combat, and where funeral services are held when they return in a coffin. Long rows of portraits of fallen soldiers are set up in one of the aisles. An older lady stands in front of one of them, her arm outstretched to touch it. She’s in tears. Maybe it was her son, her husband or just someone she used to know.
“We’ll just keep going on our own”
The grand opening has been scheduled for a Saturday, giving many young people the opportunity to attend. The schedule runs from 11 am to 11 pm, a sequence of workshops, performances and readings, many of them interactive. The venue is a place known as Festrepublic, a former factory on the edges of the city that would not be out of place in Berlin. I’ve come with my friend Oleksii and his girlfriend Anastasiia. Oleksii is the director of Building Ukraine Together (BUR), a youth NGO that has been repairing or rebuilding houses in the Donbass since the war started. The idea is to bring together people from western and eastern Ukraine and in turn, reduce prejudices.
Oleksii and his organisation are emblematic of the resilience of Ukraine and its young people. People like them, including those serving in the army, form the backbone of Ukrainian society. BUR, too, is feeling the impact of the cutbacks to USAid. Their application process was simpler than those of similar European schemes. Oleksii would like to work with partner organisations in Germany or elsewhere in Europe, but their programmes are fixed for a number of years and none of them currently want to send volunteers to Ukraine. We talk about Trump and about recent developments. “We’ll just keep going on our own,” says Oleksii.
Are we doing enough?
Later that evening I meet up with my friends Sasha and Masha, who have two adopted children. Their son is enrolling in primary school this year, his sister is around two years younger. I ask my friends how much awareness their children have of the war and how they are experiencing it. “I sometimes go to the military cemetery on the Field of Mars to visit the graves of our friends,” says Sasha, “and I’ll take the kids with me.” The children then ask where the people buried there are now. “I tell them they’re in our hearts.” That night, the air raid sirens sound out until the early morning.
Next day I need to return to Rzeszów and Jasionka. Last time, my hotel was full of people from all kinds of humanitarian organisations; this time round, it’s quiet. During breakfast, I strike up a conversation with a Ukrainian interpreter. “I still have work,” she says, “but almost all my colleagues were fired by USAid from one day to the next.”
At Jasionka airport I approach an American gentleman who looks like he is US military. He was in Kyiv on “security” business, probably meaning intelligence. Like me, he’s booked to fly to Munich; he was pulled out of Ukraine and is about to take a holiday. A loud noise indicates the arrival of a German air force aircraft on the runway. At least this part of the supply chain is still working.
I think back to my friend Oleksii, the tearful woman in the garrison church, and Sasha’s and Masha’s kids. The motto of the European Youth Capital 2025 is “Not easy but move”. It is absolutely not easy. And maybe at some point the day will come when we have to explain to the young people of Ukraine why we did not do more.
