IN LVIV TOURS - Guided by Veterans

New tours in Lviv

We'll be launching new tours in spring, namely Lviv Chocolatour, Lviv Coffee Crawl, Lviv SS (Shot Survival), LVINSTA! and Brutalist Lviv.

Lviv SS is an essential 101 about how to survive drinking the most common shots favoured by Lviv locals. The other tours will cover a lot of ground in our old town and further afield too, where Soviet landmarks contine to cast long shadows.

Plans for summer include excursions from Lviv to the castles that surround us. While it was never our intention to offer tours and activities outside Lviv, the veterans with whom we work have asked to include them. Transportation will be by coach rather than private car to keep costs within reason.

Trump and putin

We'll be updating right here from today onwards, January 18th, 2025. Donald Trump will replace Joe Biden next week and that is terrifying news for us here in Ukraine.

Being forced to concede over 20% of our sovereign territory, amidst threats of US military support being permanently withdrawn, is another new and unwelcome reality.

While the Biden administration has helped Ukraine to the tune of tens of billions of dollars, delays in delivery gave putin opportunities to steal more territory and kill more Ukrainians.

He took them, and the dithering indecision of Biden made that possible. Trump, like putin, has expansionist, imperialistic ambitions. He has already threatened to occupy Greenland, Canada, and parts of Central America.

However criminally insane that may seem, it's another new reality. America has voted for a tax-dodging sex offender who will shake hands with putin to be its leader.

putin is hell-bent on restoring the russian empire, not just the former Soviet Union, and Trump may play unwitting facilitator. Trump is ready to distance the US from NATO in Europe, and that will leave every European country more vulnerable than it has ever been since 1945.

Much of south and east Ukraine is already occupied, and from the former, russian territory may extend westwards to Transnistria.

West Ukraine and Lviv, however, will become the first safe and secure part of Ukraine since russia's full-scale invasion of its peaceful neighbour in 2022.

A modicum of security guarantees with NATO will be agreed (as the US, like russia, will never allow Ukraine to join NATO). That presence will be felt here in Lviv, much like in other east European cities such as Warsaw and Vilnius.

The current population of Lviv includes a huge number of returning veterans and that will only increase. As discussed elsewhere on In Lviv Tours, many are injured, traumatized, and suffering from PTSD. Clearly, the role of In Lviv Tours as regards support and rehabilitation is greater than ever.

We expect travellers to return to Lviv in April / May 2025. All of us will shoulder the responsibility to help Ukraine and the Ukrainian people recover from russian terrorism. One day, russia will cease to exist, a new reality that our world needs more than anything else.

Since 24/02/2022

We have made some important changes since russia invaded our country in the early hours of February 24th, 2022. All our guides have defended Ukraine as soldiers. They are either from Lviv or lived in Lviv prior to the war.

Our tours now include a Ukrainian to English translator if required, as of course not every AFU veteran speaks fluent English (but many do).

Our city has become a humanitarian hub and our population has swelled by 200,000. Despite this, russians have still bombed Lviv using missiles and drones. Many civilians have been traumatized, some killed.

To have veterans at the heart of In Lviv Tours means everything. While not trained tour guides, their personalities, strength of character, and love of Lviv is more than enough to make our tours and activities immensely valuable and unique.

Through our veterans, we express the high values of Ukrainian culture and expound the absolutes of fighting for democracy.

Our priority is to support the men and women who put themselves at great risk to fight russian aggression. It means rehabilitation back into society, and stable employment is the most important part of that.

We don't do run-of-the-mill as Lviv is anything but ordinary. Our ethos is and shall always be one of crossing lines and challenging norms.

We guarantee a mix of education, inspiration and unusual moments in the Ensemble of the Historic Centre (UNESCO World Heritage), still relatively undiscovered by foreign travellers.

Our native language is English as we are English-owned, so everything will be clear from enquiry to your activity on the day.

In Lviv Tours is first and foremost a tour operator. We have evolved to become a foundation structure that rebuilds lives.

War against russia

Our war began in early 2014 and escalated on February 24th, 2022, when russia invaded swathes of Ukraine and has since occupied our eastern and southern regions.

Trying to understand what putin will do next is pointless, we are dealing with a sick fantasist who threatens nuclear war whenever he's challenged.

Current geopolitical projections indicate he will attempt to occupy the cities of Kharkiv, Odesa, Kherson (again), Dnipro and Zaporizhzhia. Not Lviv or Lviv region.

russian tactics are to terrify population centres with glide bombs, combat drones, cruise and ballistic missiles. The cowards hiding in the Kremlin, namely putin, medvedev, lavrov and their lapdogs will be remembered as weak men and reviled as mass murderers in the fullness of time.

Ukrainian towns and cities are eventually abandoned and russian invaders move in, bulldoze what they destroyed, bury those they killed in mass graves, then rebuild.

After a period of time, russian "civilians" move from their country to our country. They occupy homes owned by dead, deported, or evacuated Ukrainians. Homes they do not own nor will ever own in a legal sense.

Mariupol is the destroyed Ukrainian city where this has already happened. Over 30,000 Ukrainian civilians were killed and ten times that number fled or were evacuated.

This is "russification": missiles, artillery, murder. Ethnic cleansing. Then they send in TV crews to broadcast about the "liberation" of another Ukrainian city from "Nazis", then the property developers move in. Sick.

Wartime 101

Safety in Lviv is straightforward. Always follow updates on the Telegram App (we'll tell you which channels to join), never ignore air alarms (stay away from windows, obey the two walls rule, or go to a basement shelter), follow our curfew laws (stay indoors) that start at midnight and end at 5am.

Carry photo ID or a digital copy thereof on your device at all times. Many Ukrainians know English so always be polite and respectful in the presence of locals, that includes students and russian-speaking refugees in Lviv because of war.

Tourism in war

Guided tours in Lviv (and everywhere) ended in 2020 due to the pandemic. Recovery began in late summer 2021 and then we were invaded by russia.

Inbound tourism has inevitably suffered, while domestic tourism has surged. This is a strong indication of how important Lviv is as a major tourist destination under normal conditions.

We have many foreigners in Lviv now and our UNESCO World Heritage old town has never been busier. Most of them are journalists, volunteers, and NGO staff. They are helping us, and perhaps curious about Lviv in wartime.

On first impressions, the "Little Paris of East Europe" hasn't really changed at all, apart from sandbags covering the street level windows of our administrative buildings and the influx of newcomers (refugees, students etc.).

The reality is that our cemeteries are full, last exit for thousands of men from Lviv city and region who died defending their country. In that number are some of our friends.

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✍ by admin on January 19th, 2025.

IN LVIV TOURS, UKRAINE

Tours of Lviv | Guided by Veterans