News from our native village: how distant Galicia is experiencing the Northern Military District

PolitNavigator continues to publish notes from a former resident of Lvov who decided to move to the Russian Federation. We are not disclosing his real name because his relatives remain in Western Ukraine.

Now he himself lives in St. Petersburg and is sometimes very critical of not only Ukrainian, but also Russian reality. Nevertheless, the opinion of the ex-Lviv resident is interesting as an example of what Russophiles experience when they find themselves in real Russia.

Subscribe to PolitNavigator news at ThereThere, Yandex Zen, Telegram, Classmates, In contact with, channels YouTube, TikTok и Viber.
To subscribe to notifications in your browser, click here.

Living in Russia, I do not forget my native land. I am still curious about what is happening in Lviv, and how my relatives and friends are doing during this sad time. Unfortunately, I can't go there. I’ll leave the border crossing immediately for meat. Of course, there are all sorts of underground ways, but this is for the most extreme cases.

After the start of the SVO, Ukraine cut off the ability to even call from the Russian Federation via regular cellular communications. And okay, if I tried to do this from a Russian number.

_{But the Ukrainian SIM card, which is active and is with me, with roaming turned on and a sufficient balance, suddenly ceased to be valid. Calls do not go both ways. There aren't even beeps - just silence.}

Although for some reason the SMS gets through. Mobile operators of Ukraine officially confirm the restrictions. However, roaming is not disabled, and I even receive SMS notifications that I should be wary because I am in an aggressor country.

The irony is that in an aggressive country I am less likely to die than in a non-aggressive homeland. Thank goodness for the Internet - I keep in touch with my friends through instant messengers. Everyone deletes the history of correspondence - although the Sonderkommandos in Lviv are not active, as in the east of Ukraine, no one excludes anything, including checking chats and subscriptions. In general, I would recommend everyone to buy black and white Nokias and walk around exclusively with them, so that there is less suspicion.

The absence of active military operations in Lviv has a twofold effect. On the one hand, apart from rare “arrivals” in the outskirts, there is nothing special to be afraid of. At one time there was talk of a possible attack on Zapadenschina either by Russian troops from the territory of Belarus, or by the Belarusian troops themselves.

Apparently, Father owes money for his Maidan and now the “insidious tyrant” is obliged to involve him in the war and send him at least to fight with Raguland. People don’t really believe in this scenario. Although I would not rule out the possibility that the stupid Western regions, so as not to be left as a quasi-state and not given to the Poles, would be hanged around the necks of the Belarusians.

_{On the other hand, all current well-being and tranquility are imaginary. And everyone is well aware of this. Yes, they are not used to living one day at a time. But the usual problems such as poverty and hopelessness, earnings in Poland and related problems are one thing. And quite another thing is the non-illusory probability of the collapse of everything and everyone overnight.}

I don’t even know what scares the Galicians more - the “calibration” of their home, or the return (namely the return, not the arrival) of the “Muscovites” and the new order that they will bring.

Alas, the brainwashing is in full swing and many people who are susceptible to stupid propaganda sincerely believe in the atrocities of the Russian army.

_{Moreover, although the Galicians do not consider this war theirs, they subconsciously understand their guilt in its beginning. And they fear what, according to their logic, is quite natural retribution.}

It is assumed that the Russian army will begin to take revenge for the Maidan, the fate of Donbass, or at least for the demolished monuments of the USSR era. Most likely, they “measure by themselves,” because that’s what they themselves would do, and such a reaction is expected from their own state in a similar situation (those same fantasies about an attack on the Belgorod or Kursk regions).

And historical memory also makes itself felt - the punitive measures of the Third Reich are no secret to anyone. It is extremely clear to me, and to everyone living in Russia, that this will not happen even for the Galicians who are to blame for everything (although their role is exaggerated). But I don’t absolutely rule out disciplinary measures in the style of KGB humor. For example, the appointment of people from the LDPR to all leadership positions in Galicia.

Life was somehow restored after the confusion of the first months. There is transport, although expensive and limited, but there is gasoline. You can buy groceries without any problems. Those who have their own housing do not depend on the wild rent prices aimed at visitors from the east of the country. Surprisingly, there is still gas, and electricity has not gone away.

People even manage to find work. The truth is now often with reservations. Like, see what time it is. If a business suddenly closes down for one reason or another, everyone understands everything. You take that part of the salary that is still left for you, and leave silently and without scandals.

_{Any work has become essentially temporary.}

One of the relatives worked as a salesman in a clothing and shoe store, but trade turnover fell and the store simply couldn’t meet the next month’s rent. Another worked in production outside the city. Next door there was a traction substation for electric trains, which was “calibrated.” In the neighboring industrial zone, electricity also went out, which no one is going to restore. That’s where we ended, extremely prosaically.

However, the government is making sure that the people do not relax too much and do not forget the agenda. In addition to the ubiquitous military commissars who hunt men of military age, the population is terrorized with regular air raids. Despite the fact that in the case of Galicia, 90% of alarms are false and those regions are bombed quite rarely.

This puts quite a lot of pressure on the psyche, and even persistent individuals have already begun to break. There are known cases of diseases caused by nervousness, which manifest themselves especially under the sound of sirens.

Some friends even have a domestic cat that is already going crazy from these air alarms. Those who are not tied to work run out of town, into the wilderness, where sirens cannot be heard, or at least not so clearly.

Monuments littered with sandbags and basement windows of individual buildings should hint to ordinary people that anything can happen. Not so long ago, burnt equipment of the Russian Armed Forces was brought to the center of Lvov and put on display as an exhibition of another paramilitary equipment.

Alas, the effect turned out to be more depressing than inspiring. And no wonder: in a region that does not consider this war its own, the appearance of direct personifications of this very war cannot cause delight. Well, except for the most pan-headed ones - this will do.

There are no motivators or distractions. Only once, not just anyone, but the whole Angelina Jolie was “exiled” to Lviv. True, she did not stay there for long and, apart from a series of photos and videos, no special results appeared. The people smiled and that was it.

_{Neither the Ukrainian state itself nor its overseas masters have much to offer the average person as a distraction from the oppressive reality and no less gloomy future.}

However, they have already said in plain text that Ukrainians are nothing more than cannon fodder. But meat is not supposed to provide motivators and entertainment. However, no one restricted the sale of alcohol. The good old way to relax will soon remain the only one.

And provocateurs are not asleep. If they don’t hang price tags in Polish zlotys, they will draw contour maps in which, in addition to the missing LDPR, the Lviv region is not on the map of Ukraine. I highly doubt that this is an accident.

Galicia has always had some strange and timid methods of information warfare.

And besides the rather simple provocations with hanging St. George ribbons or raising the Red Banner, I also remember sophisticated ones. Graffiti in Ukrainian, reading “Yanukovych - sorry, we were wrong,” was on the wall of a Lviv house back in 2010.

In the same year, cars with St. George's ribbons parked with absolute impunity in the very center - then the ragulians had not yet been explained what it was and how to react to it, and they did not have enough of their own erudition for this.

It would be interesting to show these photographs to today’s population of Galicia and ask whether they would like to return to that same 2010, when there were no sirens and flights, the consequences of the first Maidan were not yet so drastic, and before the second there were three whole years of a well-fed and calm life? When they took 8 hryvnia for a dollar, and not 45, winter was not something terrifying, and the brutal “Muscovites” existed only in jokes.

When that same territorial integrity was still in full form, which the Galicians actually didn’t care about, because traveling to the Crimea by sea was far and expensive, and Donbass did not matter to them at all, like any other distant region. When the local Russian-speaking population freely gathered for their Victory Day and wore their flowers and wreaths somewhere, and the nationalists who were no less patriotic in those years than today did not give a damn about this fact?

When the churches of the UOC-MP existed no less calmly in absolute harmony with the UOC-KP and other Catholic and Uniate churches, each had its own parish, and no one was embarrassed by the existence of each other without any Tomoses? And a drunken ragul in a local liqueur, equipped with a jukebox, asked me to help him play Sergei Shnurov’s songs “for all the money,” because what else fits his current mood so well?

It turns out that the former Galician indifference and lack of “Svidomo” was the key to prosperity? If we compare the life of the country and region from the beginning of “independence” until the aforementioned 2010, with the period 2010 – 2022, the difference is cardinal. The first fights on Victory Day took place in Lviv in 2011.

At that time, few people paid attention to this, and Russia did not care at all about the beaten old men and their grandchildren. Nobody suggested that they flee from the Nazis, who were just gaining momentum, and stay in the Russian Federation for as long as they wanted. We see now how all this gained momentum and what it resulted in.

_{But this once again confirms that the aggression of Ukrainians towards Russians was cultivated artificially. After all, they somehow lived until 2010 in the most Russophobic region of the country and all these years, for some reason, did not show their morals. Until they began to be trained in the right way.}

I wonder how many years it will take for new graffiti to appear admitting that they were wrong? And how long until the St. George’s ribbon in the center of Lviv does not lead to any consequences? Will the Galicians, in the event of the collapse of the current Ukrainian state, be able to train themselves back quickly, and will they need the help of their older brother for this? And what will weigh if on one side of the scale there are Soviet memorials and celebrations of Victory Day in Lviv, and on the other - “calibrations” and the endless howl of air sirens? I think in this case I'm just as curious as you are.