Nathan News

LVIV, Ukraine — The tiny moan of newborn babies echoes from incubators and cradles that line a small room with mint-green walls in a Lviv maternity hospital.

Twenty-seven years ago, Liliya Myronovych, head pediatrician of the neonatology department, gave birth to a baby boy, Artemiy Dymyd, here. Last week she watched from the window as her funeral unfolded in the cemetery across the road, the dirge of the military band mingling with the cries of newborn babies.

“He was my boy,” Dr Myronovych, 64, said of Mr Dymyd, who was killed in fighting in eastern Ukraine in mid-June. “That was my baby.”

Dissonant images of life and death play side by side in the city of Lviv in western Ukraine. They can be startling, as when babies are born just steps from the now overflowing military cemetery where young Ukrainian soldiers rest.

But they can also be subtle.

At the front of the maternity ward, the windows decorated with paper storks are also taped over to prevent them from shattering in the event of an explosion.

The air raid sirens that once sent Lviv residents rushing into basements no longer cause the same level of alarm as in February and March – although anxiety was heightened last week when a barrage missile was fired from Belarusian airspace within striking distance of the city.

Lviv has remained relatively peaceful, becoming a hub for humanitarian aid and a place of refuge for those fleeing fighting in the east. Yet death always comes, evident in the steady stream of fallen soldiers whose funerals are held here, sometimes multiple times in a day.

Funerals take precedence over the daily rhythms of city life. The trams stop. Bus passengers wipe tears from their eyes.

“Every time we say goodbye to them like it’s the first time,” said Khrystyna Kutzir, 35, who stood on a street in Lviv one afternoon in late June, waiting for the final funeral to pass along from the road to the military cemetery. .

Across the street, 10 medical students dressed in black and red gowns had gathered in the square outside their university to celebrate graduation.

As the funeral procession passed, students knelt along the sidewalk to honor the fallen soldier. They then got up, brushed their legs, and headed back to college to pose for photos.

A graduate, Ihor Puriy, 23, said he had mixed feelings about the long-awaited day.

“In an instant, you’re happy to graduate from college and new horizons open up before you,” he said. “And at the same time, situations occur that bring you back to reality and to the times that we live in.”

All the usual graduation celebrations were canceled during the war, but the friends had tried to find a way to mark the occasion. However, Mr. Puriy said, it was deeply uncomfortable to know that soldiers his age were dying on the front lines, never to see their own future realized. He and his fellow graduates are exempt from being conscripted because of their studies and their future profession as doctors.

“We try to keep hope for the best, to avoid the negative thoughts that each of us has,” he said. Still, it’s impossible to get used to daily reminders of death, he said.

Honoring fallen soldiers has become a grim ritual for medical school staff, as well as a few other colleges and office buildings that line the road between downtown and the cemetery. Sometimes there are five funerals in one day, says Anna Yatsynyk, 58, who works as a toxicologist at the city morgue and gets up from her office every day to go out with her colleagues to watch the grim processions.

Ms Yatsynyk said she and her colleagues have started organizing their working days so they can see the motorcades.

“It’s become a sad routine,” Ms Yatsynyk said. “But we always come. We feel it is our responsibility to show our gratitude and pay tribute.

On a June afternoon, they knelt to honor the dead as a van carrying the coffin passed. In the summer heat, many women wore sundresses and the rough cement hollowed out their bare knees.

As a black car passed, an elderly relative of the deceased soldier looked out the window pane and clasped his hands, shaking them and nodding in thanks to those who had gathered.

Everyone knows someone who fights in this war. And increasingly, everyone knows someone who has died as war reaches even the most peaceful communities.

But as the conflict escalated from weeks to months, and the freezing cold days of the winter invasion gave way to the heat of summer, the initial sense of dread in this city gave way to concern. softer. .

Parks and green spaces, cafes and terraces of Lviv are like any other European city in summer. Outside the opera, laughing children run into a fountain to escape the heat, their clothes wet and their hair clinging to them as they dodge the jets of water.

And then you look a little closer. To statues wrapped in protective materials. In traveling musicians performing patriotic songs that speak of war and death.

In the bare rooms of the National Gallery, faded squares on ornate wallpaper signal works of art taken to safety. To men in military fatigues holding hands tightly with their partners.

People in their twenties notice that they only find large groups of friends when they attend the funeral of one of their peers.

This was the case for many friends of Mr. Dymyd, the young man born in Lviv hospital and buried across the street. But despite everything, life goes on.

It has to, said Roman Lozynskyi, 28, who had been Mr Dymyd’s friend for two decades.

“That’s what we’re here for,” he said. “That’s what we protect.”

Mr. Lozynskyi, a Marine and member of Ukraine’s parliament, volunteered for the army three months ago and served in the same unit as Mr. Dymyd. It is important to him that Ukrainians live their lives, even if it can be shocking to return home after the front lines.

“It’s tough mentally, because it’s like parallel realities,” he said of the time spent in Lviv with friends and family during his short reprieve from the war to attend the funeral.

Back at the maternity ward, the new mothers give birth daily and, amidst all the chaos, find hope.

“When you talk to mothers, there is no war,” said Dr Myronovych, the pediatrician.

Khrystyna Mnykh, 28, gave birth to her first child on June 28, Ukraine’s Constitution Day. While she was in labor, the anti-aircraft alarm went off. She had just received an epidural and therefore could not go down to the shelter.

A few weeks earlier, a missile strike just a kilometer from her home shattered her neighbour’s windows. But when she held her daughter, Roksolana, those memories seemed to fade.

“You look at your little baby in your arms,” ​​Ms Mnykh said, “and you realize sooner or later that life will go on.”