Back to the U.S.S.R.: Air raid sirens are blaring so my interview with the Lviv mayor moves to the town hall bunker, writes Paule Robitaille
LVIV, Ukraine — I have an appointment to meet Mayor Andriy Sadovy at Lviv City Hall at 3 p.m., but the air raid sirens are suddenly blaring. Russian missiles incoming – again. His deputy is categorical: the interview will go ahead as scheduled. But we’ll have to move it to the basement of the town hall, here in the city’s medieval quarter.
In nine months, the municipality has built 6,000 anti-missile shelters, 1,000 of which can be heated with wood. “We’ve already stockpiled enough for all of them,” he says. The city has seen five million displaced people pass through – equivalent to six times its peacetime population. It was therefore necessary to organize services for those uprooted by the war. The mayor even hosted some of them in his home. Many have decided to stay.
And as if that weren’t enough, since September, Russia has targeted the infrastructure that keeps city residents supplied with electricity, water and sewage. Russian missiles have so far destroyed five transformers that handled half of the city’s power grid. Today, thank God, the city was not hit. “So, Mr. Mayor, how are you preparing for winter?” I ask him. He looks at me, pauses, and starts speaking.
The mayor becomes animated as he talks about his plans for the future. “We will be the first national rehabilitation ecosystem,” he says. “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 personnel and one for children, 4,000 health workers, a rehabilitation centre and a small prosthesis factory.
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