Meeting in the bunker of the mayor of Lviv

Former journalist and MP Paule Robitaille has been traveling across Europe for several weeks to report on the concrete impacts of the Russian invasion in Ukraine.

(Lviv, Ukraine) We are to meet Andriy Sadovy at Lviv City Hall at 3:00 p.m. We leave the table at the cafe next door, when suddenly the sirens start to sound everywhere in the medieval city where the mayor’s office is located. Russian missiles in flight, again. His deputy is categorical: the interview will take place, but in the basement of the town hall.

We descend the steps of the building with dozens of municipal officials. People are crammed into long benches in front of their laptops. They are still working. There’s coffee, cookies. A few colored lights remind us of the holiday season. We are taken to a room at the very back, separated simply by a curtain from the rest of the place. A giant Ukrainian flag covers an entire wall. This is the mayor’s office in the town hall bunker.

Enter Andriy Sadovy; a tall blond guy in his fifties. At the helm of this western Ukrainian city for 18 years, he greets everyone personally and sits down without ceremony. ” Sorry for the delay. He explains to me that he is not changing his schedule because of the Russian missiles, there is too much work.

Example: in nine months, the municipality has built 6,000 anti-missile shelters, including 1,000 that can be heated with wood. “We have already roped everything we need! His city has seen five million displaced people pass through. Several have decided to stay (the mayor has even hosted a few at his home). It was therefore necessary to organize services and considerably increase the number of social housing units.

And every day in Lviv, Mayor Sadovy meets bereaved families. Today alone, there were the funerals of three young men from the region, fallen in combat. “The city pays for the funeral costs. It’s too much for the citizens,” he explains.

Lviv is located very far from the front, but plays an essential role. The city received the majority of the wounded from the fighting raging between Donbass and Kherson. Since the start of the war, health workers in Lviv have already treated more than 11,000 military and civilians.

And as if that weren’t enough, since September, Russia has taken the challenge of municipal management up a notch. Its missiles have so far destroyed five transformers that generated half of the city’s electricity. Today, thank God, the shells did not hit the city. “So Mr. Mayor, how are you preparing for winter? He looks at me, pauses, and starts. “I have to see that there is a minimum of electricity for the whole population; in homes, in our 127 schools, for our essential services. It takes a year to repair each of the transformers. So we won’t count on that this winter. We subsidize half the cost of generators for businesses and families. Then I have to make sure there is public transport (trams run on electricity). Hospitals must also be running, surgeries must be carried out, there must be enough temporary and permanent prostheses for soldiers, children and the elderly. It’s missing, you know. There are a lot of amputations. But I’m not a doctor, I’m a mayor. First you have to prepare for winter, survive, hold on. It is my duty. »

He tells me that one day he met a mother and her two children. Each of them had lost a leg. They came from the east of the country. “That time, I broke down, I cried. I’m a father too, you know. So he gave his city a mission.

On the sleeve of his jersey, it reads “Unbroken”. Why ? “To say that we will never be broken. Perhaps not broken, but it will also require healing the physical and mental wounds of a traumatized nation. The mayor then wants to be a visionary and talks about his project. “We will be the first national rehabilitation ecosystem. If elsewhere in his country, it will be necessary to rebuild entire cities, in Lviv, we will rebuild humans. “We will be the model for the whole country. Already, the city of 800,000 inhabitants has a general hospital with 1,300 beds, other military and one for children, 4,000 health workers, a rehabilitation center, a small prosthesis factory. “But it will take more,” he confides to me, not giving a damn about the sounding siren. He is elsewhere, in the future.

He shows me the plans for the “Unbroken” city. “Here we are already building a new rehabilitation center. There, it will be a school right next to the children’s hospital to help the little handicapped (there are already thousands of them). Further on, this park will offer activities for war amputees. Over there, a factory will increase the production of prostheses. We will offer jobs to veterans there. And there will also be a center to meet the enormous mental health needs.

And how are you going to fund it? He cites the many partners: the United States, Switzerland, the European Union, Japan, Denmark, Israel, the small country of Malta. And Canada? Completely absent. ” They [les Canadiens] never showed any interest in the project. Never ? My country, which hosts the largest Ukrainian diaspora on the planet, which has unparalleled expertise in civil engineering and rehabilitation and which claims to have donated 320 million dollars in humanitarian aid, could you please take concrete action and participate to the reconstruction of humans in the city of Lviv?

In the meantime, the mayor will have to keep his citizens warm and protect them from the devastating impact of Russian missiles on the nerve center of Lviv. “Unbroken,” he promises.