LVIV TOURS VETERANS
A year or so ago, the In Lviv Tours homepage was rather different. Visitors looking to book tours were probably reading this with some apprehension:
"Our city is now a humanitarian hub and the population has swelled by 200,000. Despite this, russians have still bombed Lviv using missiles and drones. Many civilians have been traumatized, some killed in their homes or where they worked."
"That veterans are such an important part 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 immensely valuable and unique. Through our veterans, we express the high values of Ukrainian culture and expound the absolutes of fighting for democracy".
The second paragraph is still relevant, the first less so and here's hoping it stays that way. I kept writing:
"Our priority is to support the men and women who put themselves at great risk to fight russian aggression. It means rehabilitation into society, and stable employment is the most important part of that."
So what, if anything, has changed?
Before discussing veterans as tour guides for In Lviv Tours, allow me to write a few words about why there is less information about veterans, violence and russian war crimes on the homepage.
It may seem ludricous that tours were not the homepage focus for about a year, but when war is raging, it feels wrong not to write about it. Now, the homepage is all about guided tours.
While veterans will indeed be leading tours in future, a homepage rewire was requisite. I also unpublished a lot of content that deliberated russian aggression, russian war crimes, geopolitics, Zelenskiy, the Armed Forces of Ukraine, military strategy, and other topics related to war, Lviv and Ukraine, but not to Lviv tours.
Earlier unfocused versions of In Lviv Tours resulted in visitors finding the site when searching for news about war against russia. Google was lending authority to site content in the context of war rather than tours of Lviv. At the time, I was volunteering far from Lviv and tourism was not foremost in my mind.
Being based in Ukraine, getting factual information to people outside Ukraine is singularly important. On the other hand, populating a tours and activities website with war news and instructions about how to react to warnings was not conducive to getting tour enquiries and bookings. In Lviv Tours was drifting.
But it felt more appropriate to inform travellers about war in Ukraine than work on curating incredible tours. Bookings and enquiries were very thin on the ground between 2023-2025 anyway so ideas about developing the business, what with russian metal overhead, were already in flames.
Almost all other Lviv tourism website owners stopped working when war came to Ukraine. Since I founded In Lviv Tours in 2023, i've found my feet once again as an entry-level typist. Novice wordsmithery a wonderful way to take my mind off russia's "Especially Criminal Military Operaton".
There was a "Wartime 101" that went technical, some might say biblical about russian missiles, an emotional diatribe entitled "War with russia", an offering about tourism in war, and several more pages explaining how to help by making direct donations to the army, coming to Ukraine to volunteer etc.
With the benefit of hindsight, it was remiss of me to air my opinions. It hurt SEO and read like a geopolitical cookbook rather than being the home of interesting tours and activities in Lviv. However, I am very proud to have penned all of that and at some point i'll deposit everything on the Lviv Guided Blogspot blog.
Curating tours in blackouts with air alarms, drones and sometimes missiles heading for Lviv is rather different than curating tours about art history and archaeology in Rome, under the sun, beer in hand. There are additional pressures and it can be difficult to concentrate. This is a thinly veiled apology for going off on a tangent in 2025.
The population of Lviv swelled to almost one million in March and April 2022. Since then, some 750,000 call Lviv home but an increase to over 900,000 is on the horizon when returning soldiers come home.
Strain on the labour market let alone human and therefore civic infrastructure will be immense and Lviv is unprepared, so what can In Lviv Tours do to help?
It's really about what will happen when russia has been defeated by Ukraine. It will happen. Turning Defenders of Ukraine into educators who will guide travellers through history has huge potential, and that is the ultimate goal of In Lviv Tours. Not all tours will be guided by veterans, specifically those that include servings of alcohol, but some can be and they have been curated as such.
Lviv has the potential to become a significant tourist destination on a par with European cities such as Tallinn, Gdansk, Dubrovnik and Bratislava.
Knowing how small Lviv old town is and that the tourism footprint could and likely will overwhelm, the prospect makes me somewhat anxious, but economic benefits for Lviv should not be underestimated. Revenue for Lviv, salary for veterans.
Let's see what the future holds for inbound tourism to post-war Ukraine. For now, Danylo Halytskyi airport in Lviv is a military transport hub protected by various air defence units on high alert.
As my building is located at one end of the runway, and russian "tactical aviation" has greeted us on many early morning occasions, I know at first hand how important that is. There's nothing quite like the overture of heavy machine guns firing at combat drones before the missiles come.
I hope to be writing about tours that have been delivered by veteran guides in the not-too-distant future. Tourism in Ukraine will recover and prosper.
✍ by Pete Gr on March 22nd, 2026.