A City Out of Step: Lament for Lviv Amidst a Nation at War

Lviv, the beautiful city of lions, has long stood as a symbol of Ukrainian resilience, culture and intellectual freedom. She was a citadel of resistance against centuries of imperial encroachment and occupation, from Vienna to Moscow. In the early days of Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, Lviv’s historical significance and geographical distance from the front lines made her a sanctuary — a place of refuge for displaced persons, humanitarian workers and diplomats. The city rose to the occasion: train stations became triage points; cafés served volunteers and evacuees; churches sheltered the traumatised.

But more than three years into this brutal war, something is going wrong. Lviv is losing her moral compass.

While the cities of Kharkiv, Mykolaiv, Zaporizhzhia and Dnipro endure ceaseless bombardment, and while the forests of the Donbas are soaked in the blood of Ukraine’s bravest defenders, Lviv has increasingly begun to resemble a wartime Hanoi: a city behind the lines, but too far behind, where the absence of destruction has birthed something unbecoming. Instead of sacrifice, there is hedonism. Instead of solemnity, there is indulgence.

At 10.30pm, when bars are supposed to close in anticipation of the Midnight curfew and the streets are meant to empty in honour of national security, central Lviv is overcome by disorder. Hundreds of inebriated people — many of them foreigners with no evident purpose in Ukraine other than cheap drink and easier vice — pour out of restaurants, clubs and bars. They shout, they stagger, they brawl, they vomit. I have personally been threatened with assault by such persons, strangers to this land, whose presence here dishonours the nation they pretend to support.

Lviv’s cobbled streets, once soaked in poetry, now echo with obscenities and drunken shrieks. Men and women fall unconscious on pavements. Police cars drive slowly past the chaos, seemingly resigned to its repetition. This is not wartime discipline. This is not the Ukraine the soldiers at the front are fighting for.

In other Ukrainian cities, life is not like this. In Odesa, glide bombs rain down. In Sumy, drones stalk apartment blocks. In Kyiv, the skies erupt in sirens and fire. Even in Dnipro and Poltava, civilians rush for cover in the night and mothers fear for their children’s futures. In contrast, Lviv has become a place where war seems abstract — a narrative for newspapers, but not a felt reality. This dissonance is not only immoral. It is corrosive.

It is corrosive to unity, at a time when unity is everything. The nation cannot afford such a disconnect between the rear and the front. The lives of soldiers must not be expended so that revellers may drink freely and fall asleep in the streets of Lviv in pools of beer and bile. To allow this culture of excess to persist is to spit in the face of sacrifice.

This is not an indictment of Lviv’s people, who are among Ukraine’s proudest patriots. Nor is it a call to snuff out joy entirely. Even in war, there must be moments of relief, of beauty, of music and humanity. But what is occurring now is a grotesque imbalance. It is the encroachment of foreign degeneracy, enabled by wartime laxity, into a city that should be leading by example.

It is time for Lviv’s authorities to act.

The Lviv Police and Municipal Authorities must enforce the curfew with seriousness. Disorderly drunkenness after 11pm must not be tolerated. Public intoxication must be penalised. Venues must be held accountable for encouraging binge drinking during wartime. Licences should be revoked for establishments that repeatedly contribute to public indecency and chaos.

Foreigners who come to Ukraine should be screened with purpose. There must be no tolerance for those whose contribution to this nation’s defence is merely to consume her cheap liquor and take photographs for Instagram. Those who are here to help — medics, journalists, aid workers, volunteers — are welcome. But the war-tourists and war-drunkards are not.

Above all, Lviv must remember her role. She is not merely a safe haven. She is a moral centre. She is the cradle of Ukrainian independence, the birthplace of some of her greatest cultural and religious leaders. Lviv must again become a city of values, not a retreat from values. She must embody dignity, so that when this war is over, Ukrainians can say with pride: even far from the front, our hearts never left the trenches.

The frontline may be far to the east. But the battle for Ukraine’s soul is everywhere.