The mayor of Lviv says the city in far western Ukraine is struggling to feed and house the tens of thousands of people who have fled here from war-torn regions of the country.
“We really need support,” Mayor Andriy Sadovyi says.
More than 200,000 Ukrainians displaced from their homes are now in Lviv, filling up sport halls, schools, hospitals and church buildings. The historical city once popular with tourists had a population of 700,000 before the war.
Lviv Mayor Andriy Sadovyi in his office on March 2, 2022. (Lazar Berman/Times of Israel)
Last week, Sadovyi told The Times of Israel that the city had prepared well to deal with the tens of thousands of refugees flowing through the city at that time, but would be stretched if the number of fleeing civilians that needed support reached 200,000.
The mayor says the city needs big tents equipped with kitchens so food can be prepared.
Hundreds of thousands more people could arrive if humanitarian corridors are opened up from cities now under siege from Russian troops.
People crowd as they try to get on a train to Lviv at the Kyiv station, Ukraine, March 4. 2022 (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)
The embassies of the US, Israel and EU countries also moved to Lviv from Kyiv before the invasion.
Lviv is the main transit point for those fleeing just across the border to Poland. Many of the 1.7 million Ukrainians now abroad passed through the city. The United Nations has called the situation the fastest growing refugee crisis in Europe since World War II.
ToI staff contributed.
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