LVIV, Ukraine – Surrounded by cobblestone streets, Renaissance-era buildings, and onion-domed churches, Lviv City Hall is an impressive but calming cream-colored structure, injecting Viennese Classical style into a central city plaza.
This sunny Saturday morning, the square was filled with families enjoying a break from the week’s chill. That is, until an air raid siren ripped through the air and industrial speakers mounted on the municipal building fired up to blast a message directing people to take shelter.
Fearing that the City Hall area was about to be bombed, hundreds fled into the basement of the nearest available building: Pravda, a bar named in ironic protest against the eponymous former Soviet broadsheet that continues to serve as a mouthpiece for the Kremlin.
Subject to a country-wide wartime ban on alcohol, Pravda had closed its taps and instead has been hosting Ukrainian government press conferences for the thousands of journalists that have cycled through the western Ukrainian city of Lviv since Russia invaded over three weeks ago, finding a new life in the information war fight against its namesake.
But on Saturday morning, hundreds of Ukrainians — those who had fled City Hall and many more who were strolling in the square when the alarms sounded — took refuge amidst kegs and media equipment.
Dmytro Doroshenko, 28, and his wife had arrived in Lviv only ten hours earlier, after escaping Kyiv. The couple was passing through Lviv on their way to Doroshenko’s parents’ home in western Ukraine.
“This is nothing new,” Doroshenko said of the sirens and the fear, with a weary expression. “[In Kyiv,] we had some soldiers deployed in front of our house because we live near a bridge. This is all a common theme right now.”
Dmytro Doroshenko and his wife shelter amid air rain sirens in the basement level of Pravda, a taproom that faces Lviv’s city hall in popular Market Square, Lviv, Ukraine, on March 19, 2022. (Carrie Keller-Lynn/The Times of Israel)
“It’s safer in the Lviv region compared to Kyiv, but I can hardly say that there’s a safe place in Ukraine,” Doroshenko added. Referring to Friday’s Russian airstrike against an airplane repair facility on the outskirts of Lviv, he said, “you never know what could happen in a few hours.”
In Friday morning’s cruise missile attack, Russia destroyed an airplane repair facility that reportedly housed Ukrainian MiG fighter jets, marking the first aerial assault on this western Ukrainian city that has become a hub for internally displaced people because of its relative safety thus far.
Twelve-year-old Varia Markarian, from Lviv, sheltered in Pravda’s basement with her two friends and their three mothers. The six had been on a shopping trip when the air raid sirens sounded.
“This was the first time we went outside and it was not a really good first try,” Markarian said, in a pause from scrolling social media on her phone.
Varia Markarian, along with two friends and their mothers, shelter amid air rain sirens in the basement level of Pravda, a taproom that faces Lviv’s city hall in popular Market Square, Lviv, Ukraine, on March 19, 2022. (Carrie Keller-Lynn/The Times of Israel)
When Markarian said that she does “not feel safe,” her mother interjected that Lviv is safer than other parts of Ukraine.
“Not now. Not since yesterday,” Markarian responded, her face grave.
Mykola Lopotuik, 29, and his girlfriend, Solomia Olenska, 28, are local residents, and also struggled with what Olenska called “the new normal for us.”
“Before yesterday,” Lopotuik said, “I felt kind of safe, if you can say that it’s safe anywhere in Ukraine.”
Yet, the young couple, huddled with strangers in the Pravda basement, was adamant about staying put, preferring uncertain security at home over an uncertain future as refugees.
Mykola Lopotuik and his girlfriend Solomia Olenska shelter amid air rain sirens in the basement level of Pravda, a taproom that faces Lviv’s city hall in popular Market Square, Lviv, Ukraine, on March 19, 2022. (Carrie Keller-Lynn/The Times of Israel)
“Oh no,” Olenska said, when asked if she would leave. “Lviv is my native city and I don’t want to go to another country, another city.”
About 20 minutes after the first sirens wailed, they blared again, accompanied by announcements indicating that the danger was deemed to have passed, for the time being. The relieved crowds headed back out into the unseasonably warm, late-morning sunshine.
Saturday night in Pravda, a taproom that faces Lviv’s city hall in Market Square, Lviv, Ukraine, on March 19, 2022. (Carrie Keller-Lynn/The Times of Israel)
On Saturday evening, the alcohol ban was lifted. And in the shadow of the war, Ukraine’s Pravda was packed again, serving its proper function.
