The sound of a missile

It has gotten part of life in Ukraine and not much else

IT WAS THE FIRST TIME IN MY LIFE I heard the sound of a killing machine crossing my head and in the direction of innocent lives. It was last april in Lviv, in the day 54 of the invasion of Ukraine. At the moment I’m sharing here this article, it has been exactly 499 days since the start of the war and nothing changed except by the increase on the death toll of civilians and the extension of the widespread destruction.

In this day 499, we are again counting those whose lives couldn’t manage to survive in another Russian attack in this same city.

At that time, April of 2022, I felt like sharing some lines about that because this war, in my view at that time, “was coming to turning the point of being progressively unacceptable”.

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Since the beginning of the war, the beautiful city of Lviv has been standing firmly as a stronghold of Ukrainian pride and strength against the foreign invasion. This thriving metropolis of around one million souls was known even before the conflict by their passion for the Ukrainian culture, history and language, having a very unique heritage linked to Central European nations.

The attitude of its people, besides the fact that it's located less than 50 miles from the border with Poland, a full member of NATO, European Union and one of our most solid supporters on the fight against Russia, made Ukrainians believe that here we would be a little safer here than in the rest of the country.

Nevertheless, at 8 in the morning of that day, these scenes could be seen from several parts of the town:

The target was said to be military and transport facilities near the railway station, located approximately in the southwest part of the town. As can be entirely seen in the picture, the rockets fell in the middle of an inhabited urban area, contrary to the first reports that affected places were less dense districts in the outskirts. There were at least four missile strikes and it followed the pattern of terror employed by Russians by injuring and killing dozens of innocent people including children.

For me, it was something I did not immediately take for granted. Being in the other extreme of the city, I only heard the sirens. The blows were large enough to make the sound reach the Poland border, but it could not be felt by many across the urban area because the intense wailing noise from air raid alerts overlaps everything else.

They have been so constant and so loud that citizens got strangely accustomed to them. It takes to the point that we even don't lose the sleep or just turn up the TV volume, it has gotten part of life and not much else. I am absolutely no exception and thought it was only a general warning.

Except for this sound.

I heard well this sound and found it somewhat strange, but I was believing it was just an ordinary airplane, probably on negation. As if there were civilian airplanes flying over Ukrainian territory these days.

And it was a real punch on my stomach to know this sound was produced by the purest evil from the foreign aggressor, leaded by the probably the most evil being in the entire planet, with the objective of delivering terror to the local population and persuading them to give up.

It might be hard to define sounds from abstract elements such as evil, terror and panic, but for me this rocket was the true messenger of it.

And it only enforces our commitment to defend our nation whatever it takes.

Orginally published in April 18, 2022