The Secret Special Forces of Lviv: Whisky, Women and the Theatre of War
By Matthew Parish
Sunday 11 October 2026
There is a particular species of British gentleman who appears to flourish in the underground drinking establishments of wartime Lviv. He is generally somewhere between forty-five and sixty, although the precise calculation is complicated by the considerable physical punishment he appears to have inflicted upon himself over the intervening decades. His teeth, insofar as they remain present, resemble the ruins of a medieval fortress after an unsuccessful siege. His forearms are adorned with tattoos of obscure military insignia, skulls, daggers and occasionally misspelt Latin expressions. His clothes suggest a man who has recently emerged from a combat operation, a motorcycle accident or three consecutive nights in the same bar, and he regards these possibilities as more or less interchangeable.
He sits beneath the ancient brick vaults of an establishment that once served as a merchant’s cellar, accompanied by an extraordinarily attractive young Ukrainian woman approximately half his age. She is immaculately dressed, with carefully arranged hair, exquisite fingernails and a telephone that appears to receive messages considerably more frequently than his own. He has already consumed enough whisky to incapacitate a modest infantry platoon, and his voice has acquired that peculiar combination of volume and incoherence characteristic of British men who believe themselves to be imparting matters of exceptional national importance. She smiles sweetly, rests her chin upon one hand and occasionally asks whether he would be so kind as to buy her another drink.
The gentleman is, naturally, a former member of the British special forces. Indeed, he has been a member of so many special forces, engaged in so many classified operations, that one wonders how the British government has ever found sufficient time to conduct any ordinary military activities. He has served in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and several countries whose names he can no longer reliably pronounce. He once knew a man who knew the King, or perhaps the King’s security officer, or possibly somebody who repaired a vehicle belonging to the King’s security officer. These distinctions have become unimportant with the passage of time and whisky, and in any event everything is classified.
Now he is working for the Ukrainian Armed Forces upon an assignment of such extraordinary sensitivity that he cannot possibly disclose its nature. He cannot reveal his commanding officer, his operational responsibilities, his unit designation or the whereabouts of his colleagues. He cannot even explain why he is spending his Wednesday evening beneath an eighteenth-century building in central Lviv rather than somewhere remotely adjacent to a battlefield. He can, however, inform the entire bar, at considerable volume, that he is engaged upon a secret mission of the utmost strategic importance.
There is something wonderfully British about this particular method of preserving military secrecy. Genuine intelligence professionals are generally encouraged to maintain a low profile and disclose as little as possible about their activities. Our gentleman has adopted a more innovative doctrine, whereby operational security consists of repeatedly announcing that one possesses operational secrets, preferably to complete strangers in establishments containing surveillance cameras, intoxicated tourists and women with smartphones.
His young companion listens with the patience of a diplomat attending a particularly unsuccessful international conference. She has, after all, been living in a country at war for several years, and understands that extraordinary stories are one of Ukraine’s most abundant natural resources. She has encountered men who have personally advised the President, men who possess direct telephone numbers for generals, and men entrusted with secret weapons systems whose existence cannot be acknowledged by any government on earth.
There is no particular reason to assume that she is deceived. Indeed, the more interesting possibility is that she understands the entire situation considerably better than the gentleman does. He believes he is purchasing admiration, affection and a fleeting reconstruction of the masculine glory that middle age and civilian life have denied him. She understands that she is being offered free drinks in exchange for listening to an increasingly implausible monologue, and has decided that this constitutes an acceptable commercial arrangement for the evening. If either participant is being exploited, it is by no means immediately obvious which.
War zones have always attracted such characters. Alongside the extraordinarily brave, the genuinely committed, the humanitarian idealists and the professional soldiers, there invariably arrives a wandering population of adventurers, fabulists, fugitives and individuals whose domestic lives have become insufficiently interesting to sustain their own attention.
War offers these people an extraordinary opportunity for personal reinvention. In an ordinary British provincial town, a man with broken teeth, alarming tattoos and a problematic relationship with whisky might be regarded as a familiar if unfortunate presence at the local public house. Transport precisely the same individual to a Ukrainian city under intermittent Russian missile attack, add a camouflage jacket and a cryptic reference to special operations, and he may suddenly present himself as an indispensable participant in the geopolitical struggle for European civilisation.
The phenomenon is hardly new. The Spanish Civil War attracted its romantic revolutionaries and international adventurers. The Balkans in the 1990s provided opportunities for a remarkable collection of foreign soldiers, self-appointed intelligence officers, journalists and eccentric intermediaries. Afghanistan and Iraq generated entire industries of security consultants whose biographies sometimes seemed longer than their operational experience. Ukraine has inherited this ancient tradition and introduced the additional possibilities afforded by social media, crowdfunding and the extraordinary flexibility of the term volunteer.
The essential absurdity lies not in the possibility that foreigners might genuinely serve Ukraine. Many have done so with courage and distinction, and some have paid with their lives. Nor should one assume that a man with broken teeth and tattoos has never experienced combat. The distinction is between those whose experiences have made them reluctant to speak and those for whom alleged military experience has become an inexhaustible source of conversation. The former may be found quietly arranging transport, evacuating civilians, repairing vehicles or recovering from injuries. The latter are more likely to be explaining to a young woman in a basement bar that they personally know how the war is going to end, but unfortunately cannot share this information without compromising national security.
There is, moreover, a particular kind of loneliness concealed beneath this theatrical masculinity. The gentleman’s performance is ridiculous, but not entirely incomprehensible. Somewhere in Britain there may be an unremarkable life from which he has escaped: a failed marriage, a disappointing career, estranged children, an accumulation of unpaid bills, or simply the terrible discovery that nobody any longer considers him interesting. Ukraine offers him a place in which the ordinary rules of social recognition have been temporarily suspended. Here, amid air raid warnings and military vehicles, he can construct a new biography out of old military vocabulary, borrowed insignia and the credulity of strangers.
The tragedy is that Ukraine has no need of such invented importance. Its actual suffering is more than sufficient, and its genuinely heroic people seldom possess the luxury of converting their experiences into entertaining conversation over imported whisky. A Ukrainian soldier returning from the eastern front may have no wish whatsoever to discuss where he has been. A widow in Kharkiv may be struggling to support her children. A volunteer in Lviv may spend fourteen hours a day arranging medical supplies without once announcing that her activities are classified.
Yet the extraordinary thing about wartime life is that these realities coexist with the most preposterous human behaviour. An air raid alert may sound while somebody is explaining that he once conducted an operation so secret that even its participants were not informed of its purpose. The bartender may glance at his telephone to determine whether there is an immediate danger, before returning to the more pressing practical question of whether the gentleman intends to pay for the next round. Civilisation does not suspend its foolishness merely because missiles are falling upon it.
It would be tempting to dismiss these gentlemen merely as impostors and their female companions as opportunists. Yet this would miss the deeper comedy, which concerns the extraordinary lengths to which human beings will go in order to be admired. The man wishes to be regarded as brave, dangerous, mysterious and indispensable. The young woman may wish to be regarded as beautiful, desirable and worthy of generosity. Neither ambition is confined to wartime Ukraine; they are among the oldest impulses in human society. War merely provides an unusually extravagant vocabulary in which to express them.
There is also a subtle injustice in the gentleman’s appropriation of the Ukrainian war for his own emotional purposes. For Ukrainians, the war is not a theatrical background against which to display an interesting personality. It is an unwanted national calamity, sustained by Russian aggression and resisted at enormous human cost. Yet for a certain category of foreign visitor, the country becomes an immense adventure playground in which the risks borne by other people acquire the glamour of personal experience. One can drink in Lviv, photograph military vehicles, acquire a selection of martial accessories and return home with a reputation as somebody who has been in Ukraine during the war. Whether one has contributed anything useful to the defence of the country is a separate question, and one that may be quietly omitted from the resulting autobiography.
Nevertheless, Lviv possesses a remarkable talent for accommodating these contradictions. Its underground bars, with their ancient masonry, low ceilings and occasional interruptions to the electricity supply, have witnessed more varieties of human folly than most cities can reasonably be expected to endure. Austro-Hungarian bureaucrats, Polish officers, Soviet functionaries, dissidents, smugglers, journalists and visiting diplomats have all contributed to the city’s lengthy history of extravagant self-deception. The British special forces veteran with the broken teeth is merely the latest participant in an established civic tradition.
And so the evening progresses towards its inevitable conclusion. The gentleman has reached the stage at which his recollections of military service have become entirely independent of chronology, geography and the ordinary limitations of the English language. His companion is still smiling, although she has begun looking at her telephone with increasing determination. He has just explained, for the fourth time, that he would tell her what he really does in Ukraine if only he could trust her, whereupon she gently squeezes his hand and asks whether he might buy her one final cocktail. He agrees immediately, because this is clearly the sort of difficult strategic decision for which his years in the special forces have uniquely prepared him.
Outside, the cobbled streets of Lviv glisten beneath the streetlights. Somewhere to the east, Ukrainian soldiers are holding defensive positions in appalling conditions, while engineers repair damaged infrastructure and families attempt to sleep through another uncertain night.
Within the basement, our hero has finally succeeded in persuading himself that the young woman is fascinated by the mysteries of his extraordinary life. She accepts her cocktail with a charming smile, and he resumes his account of a highly classified operation that cannot possibly be disclosed to anyone.
The bartender pours another whisky. The young woman checks her telephone. The secret mission continues.
War may destroy cities, governments, families and the comfortable assumptions upon which ordinary existence depends, but it has never succeeded in abolishing vanity, loneliness, sexual optimism or the British male conviction that a sufficiently impressive military anecdote will eventually persuade a beautiful woman to fall in love with him.
