The same day, Al Majalla was on the road to the city of Lviv, in western Ukraine about 80 kilometres from the border with Poland.
Since Russia began attacking Ukraine a year ago in a major escalation of hostilities that initially began in 2014, Lviv has served as a place of relative safety for many people from other Ukrainian regions.
A soldier talks to his mobile phone as he walks in the city center, in Lviv, Western Ukraine, on Tuesday, Feb. 21, 2023.But it has not been left unscathed.
Last week, the head of the Lviv Oblast Military Administration said a critical infrastructure facility had been hit in Lviv "by an air raid" without providing further details.
On the very first day of the Russian invasion, on 24 February last year, local media reported: "In the Lviv region, enemy troops attacked three military units."
Russian missiles targeted the Lviv international airport the following month as well, destroying an aircraft repair factory nearby.
Local populations in other areas of the country have suffered mass killings, sieges, and brutality by Russia that observers claim amount to "war crimes."
The population here seems safe from such atrocities for the time being, due to the distance from Russia's borders and immediate intentions.
In a conversation in Lviv on 21 February, one man from Chernihiv in northern Ukraine told Al Majalla that he had left his native region within days of the invasion.
Another younger man working as a waiter in the central part of Lviv said that he had also come here only a few days after the invasion started, from the southern port city of Mykolaiv.
The rest of his family had remained there with the exception of his father, he said.
"He has skin problems," the young man noted on his father, "and the water is very bad after attacks on the city, so he went to Odessa," another key Ukrainian port city on the Black Sea.
Ukrainian military's Grad multiple rocket launcher fires rockets at Russian positions in the frontline near Bakhmut, Donetsk region, Ukraine, Thursday, Nov. 24, 2022.Russia has often struck key civilian infrastructure in its military operations, as part what many observers say is a hallmark of its operations elsewhere as well, such as in Syria.
