Mission Day One

Another Commentary Coming from

An American in Ukraine

by Dr. E. C. Olson, Mission Director

We hadn’t even passed into Ukraine when our first warning of The War interrupted our plans.

Monday, July 18, 2022, 11:32 pm Western Ukraine Time Zone
The Grand Hotel, Downtown Lviv, Ukraine

My original notes for this Day One article, taken over the past 36 hours, read more like any ordinary European travelog…until 7:35 pm that is, when we were still inside Poland, driving south on Highway E372 passing by the town of Tomaszow Lubeleski. That’s when my incredible Day One guide, Anastasiia Pozhar’s phone screeched out-loud.

“Missile Warning” the young attorney said in a matter-of-fact tenor so benign that my eyes locked onto her – waiting for a hint of fear or panic (that never came). Instead, keeping her professional tenor intact, she made some comment about how this might create a problem for us because of the distance we had yet to drive to Lviv, and specifically get indoors in Lviv before the 11:00 war-time curfew in Ukraine.

Now more impressed than stunned, inside my head I was screaming, “Are you kidding me? (reminding myself that our Mission website readers include children, I actually silently screamed that in much more colorful terms, as any person would who never had to heed such a warning).

“Here”, she continued, “give me your phone and I’ll download some apps that you’ll really be using a lot in-country.” So now being impressed and obliging in a very grateful way, I handed her my phone and listened to her as she named the apps, leading with the Ukraine’s Missile Warning System app, which features an up-to-the-minute audible warning whenever a missile attack is imminent. This audible warning is backed by a map of Ukraine that showed which region the warning applied to; this one colored nearly the entire map blood red (which means that at this very moment, Russian missiles were detected in the skies above 21 of Ukraine’s 23 regions). The look of astonishment on my face must have been quite noticeable, because as she handed me back my phone she smiled and said, “Welcome to Ukraine”.

Indeed! That scenario, so poignantly narrated by this young professional woman, certainly epitomizes every admirable thought I had over these past four months as I was researching The War. But first, how appropriate I thought, that one of the hundreds of these missile warnings (that have been activated since the February invasion) would occur right before I entered Ukraine – for the very first time ever – and on Day One of our Mission. We’ll have to wait until tomorrow for the report on how many missiles eluded Ukraine’s own version of Israel’s Iron Dome and hit Ukrainian soil, so stay tuned for that.

Second, Anastasiia’s professional reaction revealed how…well, professional all Ukrainians have been throughout this horrific drama; there’s nary a hint of fear or panic at all in their voices. Instead, she pivoted to the logistical concerns this attack caused, capped by us needing to get indoors before 11:00 (for the record, I did look at my watch when we stepped inside the Gothic doors of The Grand: no kidding, it was 10:58 pm).

After the warning had sounded, Anastassia (again calmly) gave me the instructions about the mandatory “seek shelter immediately” protocol. I’ll hit the high points of that for the benefit of our American readers, who have never had to deal with anything pertaining to bomb shelters as part of their everyday lives – a possible exception is if some of you are like myself, who as a child in the early-1960’s, had to participate in nuclear attack warnings during the Cold War (and it is much more than ironic that in both of these cases, the missile-shooting culprit was one in the same country: Russia/Soviet Union).

For the next hour, which included our long wait in “the queue” (that the Border Guards and Customs agents maintain at the border crossing), where we saw an equal number of cars and especially eighteen-wheelers going in both directions, Anastasiia spoke about all the different ways that the war has impacted their lives above and beyond the violence, mayhem and death that is nearly everywhere. This tutorial illustrated how totally disruptive The War has been for even the residents of the northern and western regions who are hundreds of miles from the front lines.

These days, the Ukrainian’s reality is so far from even the most liberal definition of “normal” that I naturally wondered if we Americans would act so obediently. I still haven’t totally resolved that comparison, because as much as I want to think that Americans would persistently obey the “seek shelter immediately” or die protocol, I can’t ignore the fact that a near-majority of Americans eschewed mask-wearing rules, tempting fate to prevail over another unseen deadly force .

The need for these missile attack warnings have become painfully commonplace recently here in all parts of Ukraine because of the dozen or so days in early-July (and obviously continuing today) when countless Russian cruise missile and ICBMs – most fired from ships and submarines hundreds of miles away – have begun raining down on large cities in the northern half of the country, the 12-13 regions which previously were considered “safe”.

If taken collectively this July barrage hit cities that haven’t felt the sting of war since the first few weeks of The War, while also being painful reminders that no Ukrainian building is safe from attack. These latest missile attacks have mostly struck civilian apartments, schools and hospitals – note that they’ve hit civilian, not military targets (which is a theme you no doubt will read a great deal about in our Mission reporting).

To be honest, I am tempting fate right now as I’m sitting outside of a very prominent hotel in the center of Lviv, while reminding myself of the 15-20 missile attacks on Ukrainian hotels that have occurred since July 1. Clearly I have yet to go “all-in-Ukrainian”, but I’m pretty certain that I will be motivated to comply tomorrow, in broad daylight, when I’m able to see the destroyed civilian targets that are within five miles of where I am at.

For those of you who might wonder what my original Day One report would have been if this missile attack warning hadn’t occurred, aside from listening to Anastasiia’s clear-headed take on a wide range of war-time matters, I saw some incredibly beautiful country in southern Poland/northern Ukraine. I was mostly struck by how perfectly tended-to was the vast agricultural fields – we’re visiting Eastern Europe right when last year’s winter wheat cops are being harvested (and yes, I saw lots of green John Deere tractors, combines and harvesters), while this year’s corn crop is about chest-high, and as soybeans and sunflower seed crops are getting close to harvesting.

This is a remarkably beautiful country…if one can close their eyes as you drive past the scars of war. But that’s hard, not because it is particularly gruesome – it’s not, at least yet (for tomorrow we head south towards the front lines). Instead it is hard to look away because right next to a burned-out tank is a beautiful Ukrainian Orthodox Church, or another of the endless strips of agricultural green corn shocks and neatly trimmed blond rows of harvested wheat. So bold are these contrasts that I sense that wherever we go this week there will be those polar opposites.

War and Peace.