Petro Radkovets, a well-known Lviv tour guide, introduces the wounded to the city
Yulia Skarlat
For New Pathway – Ukrainian News, Kyiv
Ukrainians now live through daily air raid alarms and missile and drone attacks which happen practically every week. The last attack, in late January, mostly hit the country’s central regions. And although most of the missiles were shot down by Air Defense Forces, eight missiles still hit infrastructure objects.
How does it feel to live through this? Having to adjust your working and household schedules around blackouts and lack of heating creates a lot of inconveniences. This also creates a lot of business for restaurants across the country which have stocked on generators. However, secondary school and university students are among the most affected as frequent air raid emergencies seriously disrupt the education process. It is probably one of Putin’s objectives – to bring the quality of Ukrainian education down with his missile and drone terrorism.
Still, life goes on, and ordinary Ukrainians find opportunities to study, work, donate and continue living. The main rule that gives us strength and motivation is to remain cheerful and not lose hope but rather act and help others.
One such project is “The City Heals”, introduced in Lviv. This is the first program for the socio-cultural rehabilitation of military personnel in Ukraine. “The City Heals” was developed together with the departments of tourism, culture and healthcare of the Lviv City Council and the NGO “Sane Ukraine”.
The project’s main idea is to provide the soldiers, who are recovering from their wounds at the Lviv hospitals, with psychological services to help them adapt to civilian life.
Khrystyna Lebed, head of the Lviv Tourism Department, said:
“We want them to be able to get away from hospital wards and get fresh emotions that also contribute to rehabilitation. Before that, we conducted a survey of what exactly the military would like to see, so we are compiling a route in accordance with their wishes.”
Psychologists and psychotherapists of “Sane Ukraine” have been training 11 guides who provide tours for the military through the city as well as to museums, theatres and different institutions. “The City Heals” will last the whole year.
The Ukrainian military, it turns, don’t just put their lives in danger and protect us from the invaders, they also donate their own funds for the Forces. The Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Valerii Zaluzhnyi, has recently donated $1 million to the army, which he received as an inheritance from the United States. These funds were bequeathed to him by Hryhoriy Stepanets, an American of Ukrainian origin.
Hryhoriy Stepanets was born in Vinnytsia. In the Soviet times, he worked at the Geophysical Research Institute in Moscow, but signed a letter in support of dissidents and was soon fired by the authorities on a false pretext. Later, he was persecuted by the KGB and was unable to work. After Mikhail Gorbachev came to power, Hryhoriy received permission to leave the Soviet Union. In 1989, he came to the United States and began working for Microsoft in Redmond, Washington, as a software developer. Upon his passing in October 2022, he left his estate for Ukrainians and Ukraine-related causes. Lviv-based Ukrainian Catholic University was also among those who recipients.
“At the end of last year, we received a letter from a legal company dealing with inheritance. Now many Ukrainians say that they do not believe that someone from America transferred the inheritance, and Zaluzhnyi took it and believed it. We also didn’t believe it at first, we thought it was a joke,” Natalia Klymovska. UCU’s Vice Rector for Development and Communications said. The University got USD 2 from Stepanets who they never knew before.
Valerii Zaluzhnyi and Hryhoriy Stepanets
Ukraine’s fight for freedom brings sacrifice and wonders from all kinds of people from all over the world.
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