War and impoverishment came to Lviv, – Reuters
London - Kyiv, April 10 (PolitNavigator, Vasily Ablyazimov) - When the Ukrainians overthrew President Viktor Yanukovych last year, there was nowhere greater euphoria than in Lviv, a city a short drive from the EU border where people have dreamed for generations of leaving orbit Moscow and join the West. More than a year of war and economic collapse later, nowhere is disappointment felt more sharply than here, writes correspondent Reuters in an article in The New York Times.
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“Everyone thought Ukraine would suddenly turn into Poland,” says mechanic Taras Yakubovsky, sitting on a cast-iron slab in his small workshop, where work has dried up because customers can no longer afford car repairs. “But we are becoming more like the Somalia of Europe,” he concludes.
Formerly part of the Austrian Empire before World War I, the city is still full of Baroque churches and looks more like Central Europe than the ex-USSR, which it joined only after the Red Army took it from Poland in 1939. noted in the publication.
Lviv residents, known for their hardline nationalist stance and pro-European beliefs, traveled by bus to Kyiv last year, forming the core of the Maidan movement in the capital's central square that ousted President Viktor Yanukovych after he rejected a free trade agreement. trade with the EU, reports Reuters.
“With the uprising followed by a war with pro-Russian separatists in the far east, Lviv residents were among the most enthusiastic volunteers. Now a major city in Ukraine has suffered greatly - Lviv has one of the highest official casualties per capita in the conflict,” the agency writes.
But after a harsh winter and an economic crisis, support for the war is waning even here. More than half of people in Western regions believe the government must avoid further bloodshed at all costs, according to a survey by research firm GfK.
“Everyone is helping. However, less and less. We receive much less than last year,” says Reuters correspondent Yuriy Yanitsa, a volunteer supporting the Ukrainian army.
Until now, the news agency admits, the benefits of association with the EU, even in the Western regions, are still largely hypothetical, and the war and economic crisis are real. The national currency collapsed, thereby reducing the average monthly wage to $150 per month.
“Those doing business abroad are now finding it harder to convince their clients that Western Ukraine is stable and far from a war zone,” said Elena Lisichanskaya, a manager at an American company that hires Ukrainians to develop software in Lvov.
“We explain to our clients that there are 1000 kilometers from Lviv to the east of Ukraine. The distance is the same as from here to Venice,” Elena tells the correspondent. “But many companies have postponed contracts with us due to instability.”
She said that her friend lost his job in the logo design industry because the company where he worked moved its business from Lviv... to Taiwan.
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