Lviv is teeming.
Like Victoria, it’s a tourist city at the western edge of the country, and is used to hosting visitors. Still, the surge of humanity fleeing the Russian onslaught is straining capacity.
Streets are congested, says Sidney’s Michael Bociurkiw, on the phone from Ukraine. Long lines stretch outside shops. Ditto for the bank machines, if your debit and credit cards still work.
Family heartbreak plays out in public, with mothers and children joining the crush of those seeking safety in Poland, and fathers staying behind. The scenes at the train station are terrible. Bociurkiw figures it would be harder for him to get out now than it was just a few days ago.
As a journalist and global affairs analyst, and someone with an extensive background with humanitarian groups, Bociurkiw has spent much of his life in the world’s trouble spots. Today’s unfolding tragedy hits particularly hard, though.
“Ukraine has always been a second home for me,” he said. “I’m seeing landmarks that I love, that I’ve been to, being blown up.”
People he knows well are in danger. “That’s what makes it difficult to watch, when you have some of your best friends in bomb shelters.”
Bociurkiw has been busy lately as a media commentator adding context to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. CNN mostly, but he also appears on the BBC, National Public Radio, Al Jazeera, Ukrainian television…. “Some days I do live hit after hit after hit,” he said Wednesday, right after talking to CBC Radio’s The Current.
It’s a long way from his life on Vancouver Island. “Sidney has been my safe haven,” he says. “It’s quiet, it’s tranquil. I bicycle every day on the path around the airport.”
Knowing he can return there helps keep him going when he is in one of the darker corners of the world. It also hurts to know his Ukrainian friends aren’t so lucky.
Right now, Bociurkiw is a good bridge between Ukrainian and Canadian realities. As a senior fellow at the Washington, D.C.-based Atlantic Council, he knows the geopolitics.
Also, his parents came to Canada from Ukraine. He has spent plenty of time in the country — he was the spokesperson for the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe after Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 — and speaks the language fluently. He has been there for the past month.
Here’s what he has to say: It’s bad and it’s going to get worse. The UN estimates 836,000 Ukrainians fled the country within six days of the invasion, with many more to follow. It’s becoming harder to get money and supplies to those who need them most.
“I fear that the footprint of violence and shelling will increase,” Bociurkiw says. Missiles hadn’t struck Lviv as of Wednesday, but people are fearful, anxious.
Still, he is touched by how well he is treated on the street. “People are so kind and want to help.”
Also, the outpouring of global goodwill, the belief that there will be help from outside when it’s time to rebuild, has offered Ukrainians a ray of light. Television tells stories of international support. “They really need that right now.”
That leads to a question: Do the gestures made in places like far-off Victoria make a difference? “Absolutely,” Bociurkiw says.
Those rallies on the legislature lawn matter. So do pictures of bridges and buildings lit up in blue and yellow, and the tape-in-your-window Ukrainian flag printed in Wednesday’s Times Colonist.
Such images get transmitted back to Europe by Ukrainian-Canadians via social media. (“Please don’t stop,” Bociurkiw urges Vancouver Islanders posting such content.)
Demonstrations of solidarity with Ukraine also send a message to politicians, Bociurkiw says. They can awaken international corporations, too, spurring them to devote resources to humanitarian and recovery efforts. “They can often work and mobilize faster than governments can, because they’re already there on the ground.”
He mentions world-class Canadian telecom companies as having what will be needed. “Ukraine is going to need a lot of help in terms of rebuilding its infrastructure.”
The immediate need, though, is help for those seeking refuge. Canada has plenty of people with soft-power skills who could be teamed up and dropped into countries like Poland to help with temporary resettlement, Bociurkiw says.
Canada, with its huge, well-organized diaspora (more than 1.3 million here have Ukrainian heritage), is also well-positioned to offer shelter to displaced Ukrainians (many of whom, he says, could fill jobs in health care, tech and other areas hurt by the labour shortage).
In other words, we could offer a safe haven, just like Bociurkiw and the rest of us already enjoy.
