UA / NATO V PUTIN
All videos and photos provided by our guides, Lviv locals who have defended Ukraine against russian invaders. Now they are recovering from physical injuries and war trauma. All are readjusting to civilian life and that is no easy task.
While some videos show injury, death, danger and destruction, others bear witness to camaraderie, humour and humanity in impossible conditions.
Videos 1 - 16 by Danilo who was fighting around Klishchiivka and Kurdiumivka, both a few miles due south of Bakhmut. Before there, Danilo was engaged in combat operations in Zaporizhzhia and Kherson directions.
Dead and trapped russians in Klishchiivka, the Ukrainian soldier says "greetings to your relatives".
russian artillery lands close nearby
Medic records russian shelling from outpost
Ukrainian soldiers rest in their trench dugout
Ukrainian soldiers rest in their trench dugout 2
Ukrainian soldiers rest in their trench dugout 3
Funny moments with a russian orc washing line
Ukrainian soldiers find russian toilet paper
Dead russian orcs around a conquered outpost
Ukrainian soldiers in their trench
- - -
Ukrainian soldier under sporadic gunfire
Ukrainian soldiers looking for russian orcs
Injured russian orc
Ukrainian vehicle hits a landmine and blows up
The aftermath
GAME OVAL?
President Zelenskiy has just gone on the offensive against President Trump after being provoked by Vice President Vance. The very existence of Ukraine is now under a new level of threat.
As a reminder, Zelenskiy and his compatriots are at war with russia; Trump is a convicted felon and potential russian stooge; JD Vance is a potential russian stooge suffering from acute abusive personality disorder. It was never going to end well.
While Vance's behaviour surprised no one, neither did Zelenskiy's combative intransigence, a completely understandable trait what with a million dead on the sovereign territory of Ukraine and russia creeping westward. Understandably, he was unable to exercise restraint in front of the only double act on earth that can save Ukraine.
Trump ordered a shellshocked Zelenskiy to leave The White House, US military support for Ukraine has been thrown into jeopardy, and Europe, led by the United Kingdom, is racing to repair the damage.
President Zelenskiy's meeting with Donald Trump and JD Vance on February 28th, 2025 may yet prove to be more significant than russia's invasion of Ukraine on February 24th, 2022, in the sense that bilateral relations between the US and Ukraine could be severed and ties with russia restored.
Trump, the most powerful man in the world, is dangerously unpredictable and his sidekick, Vance, a puerile, vile creature, but there's a time and a place to be combative. Biting the hand that feeds inside The Oval Office at any time is never a good idea.
Whatever was said behind closed doors, Zelenskiy had to sit down, listen, and sign the minerals contract, as there is likely no other way to end war with russia. He did the opposite. Understandably emotional about the ongoing destruction of his country, there's a time and a place for public sparring.
Has Zelenskiy put the world on the brink of nuclear war? Bleating about NATO membership every second day has infuriated putin, prolonged the war and stymied potential peace talks.
Neutrality was, and still is the only way forward. It's simple geographical and geopolitical fact, not an opinion. A deal with Trump is all we have, the alternative could be Ukrainian SSR.
Ukrainians are asking why the Americans are being polite to russian war criminals and aggressive towards Zelenskiy. The answer is simple. russia has more money than Ukraine and Trump can "do deals" with putin for profit. His only interest in Ukraine is money from minerals.
Trump is neither a diplomat nor a politician, he's a ruthless businessman without morals of any kind, and a clearer picture has emerged as regards why he didn't want a Ukrainian delegation in Riyadh, wheeling and dealing with russian war criminals apart.
Zelenskiy does not have the diplomatic maturity to steer his country towards some sort of survival, and the same can be said of his inner circle. A skilled European diplomat must deal with Trump on behalf of Ukraine. We wait for round two, the sooner the better.
✍ by Pete Gr on March 1st, 2025.
BACK IN THE U.S.S.A
putin's maximalist ambitions have been galvanized by American appeasers. The criminal complicity that went on in Riyadh will never be accepted by Ukraine.
Photos of smiling Americans side by side with smiling russian war criminals such as sergey lavrov, the Nazi thug who should have been executed by firing squad within minutes of arriving in Saudi Arabia, remind of Neville Chamberlain in 1938. Munich Agreement, Riyadh Agreement.
Clearly, America is ready to welcome genocidal terrorist outcasts "russia" back to the fold. Clearly, over a million dead here in Ukraine worth less than a brick in Trump's Mexican wall. Let's not forget that Donald Trump was elected by the majority of the American people.
putin, the de facto expansionist totalitarian, wants to buy time to rebuild and then invade former Soviet countries, NATO members or not. putin, being a coward, will target the smallest first, namely Estonia, Latvia, and Moldova.
With American arrogance, naivete and stupidity in his back pocket, putin will likely be given carte blanche to restore the former U.S.S.R. by Trump's U.S.S.A. Will tourism still be a thing in Lviv and Ukraine under such gloomy prospects? HELL YES. No air alarms in Lviv for weeks. Join us.
✍ by Pete Gr on February 17th, 2025.
RIVER OF NO RETURN?
February 13th. may go down in history as the day Trump pardoned putin of unprovoked mass murder in Ukraine. Will Trump sell Ukraine down the river?
Signs are that russia has already been granted all currently occupied sovereign territory of Ukraine before a proposed meeting between Trump and putin in Saudi Arabia, without Ukrainian representation.
Additionally, Trump has told all NATO members that russia is their problem unless they increase defence budgets from 2% to 5%. That won't happen overnight.
Trump and Pete Hegseth have also made clear that US troops will not be stationed in Ukraine as part of a "security guarantee" to stop russia stealing more of Ukraine. Has everyone forgotten that russia is a war machine that exists to terrorize?
The responsibility of security guarantees will be one for European and British armies to chew over. Germany has ruled out the prospect of its military on the ground.
Trump has also demanded $500 billion of rare earths from Ukraine for what looks like a lot of bluster and brokering a "peace deal" that could break Ukraine.
What about Lviv and west Ukraine? It's been relatively peaceful here since Trump took over from Biden, the last major missile strike on Lviv in early September last year. Any big territorial changes will be played out in our south and east.
Lviv life will continue as normal while the totalitarian regimes that surround us change names, borders and boundaries. History reminds us that Lviv has been here before and knows how to adapt.
✍ by Pete Gr on February 14th, 2025.
FROM 18/01/2025
We'll be updating about our war right here from today onwards, January 18th, 2025. Donald Trump will replace Joe Biden next week and that will impact upon Ukraine immediately.
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. Trump will call the shots, however, and he has the strength of character to get the better of putin.
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, imperialist ambitions. He has already threatened to take control of the Panama Canal and even occupy Greenland.
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.
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.
✍ by Pete Gr on January 18th, 2025.
THE REALITY OF WAR
russia wants to recreate the former Soviet Union by force and Vladimir Putin is at the wheel, so to speak. He has already killed almost half a million people (mostly his own people, thrown into the "meat grinder" of east Ukraine) in his quest to subjugate Ukraine.
Putin uses fear, terror, propaganda, and baseless, outrageous claims about Ukraine having no right to exist. His objective is the total annihilation of Ukrainian culture. Do we have another Adolf Hitler in the room? Absolutely yes.
The russian people live simple, ignorant lives, controlled by Kremlin-controlled mass media in an evaporating democracy.
Are they also to blame? Yes. There has been no sign of revolution or revolt in russia, bar Yevgeny Prigozhin's ill-fated Wagnerian march on Moscow and freedom fighters in russia's western regions.
The Armed Forces of Ukraine and partisan groups in the temporarily occupied territories of our south and east have eliminated c. 20% of the Black Sea Fleet, over 450,000 russian soldiers (orcs, mostly convicts), and 15% of russia's oil industry.
They are sending drones deep inside russia that target military airfields and installations, some towns have been bombed and civilians killed, in Belgorod, for example. russians are finally waking up to the war they started.
For how long can this continue? NATO support, more specifically US support has wavered of late, but the delivery of more Patriot air defence systems is imminent as are dozens of F-16s.
Putin is flattening our second city, Kharkiv, while almost every Ukrainian city is being bombed on a daily basis. Even Lviv has been hit, although russia generally targets energy infrastructure in our western regions and those sites are rural.
russians being russians, we all face challenging conditions. Drones and missiles arrive between 3am and 6am when people are trying to sleep.
Putin threatens nuclear war every second month and his military planners have taken to targeting civilians. This sick terror tactic drives Ukrainians from their homes, leaving empty towns and cities that russians will eventually occupy and "develop".
While it is probable that NATO and its tentacles engineered the removal from office of pro-russian President Viktor Yanukovych in 2014, that does not change the fact that Ukraine has the absolute right to democratic governance.
The definition of democracy in the modern world is to be fully independent of interference by russia, china, and the rest of the BRICS cabal.
NATO expansionism is real, but NATO countries are broadly democratic, or at least significantly nicer countries to live in than russia (and china, iran, north korea).
Can a lasting peace be achieved? The point of no return is in the rear-view mirror and the spectre of clown President Trump looms large. He will end all support for Ukraine and listen to what Putin has to say about the future of our south and east.
Could things be better? In our opinion, Ukraine should have negotiated a protected neutral status with NATO in 2014. It didn't happen, we entered into a frozen conflict while russia built up its forces, and here we are.
✍ by admin on November 8th, 2024.