Back to Ukraine with the Airports Still Closed

​This is an update to Back to Bucha With the Airports Still Closed originally posted December 2022.

As we mark over two and a half years since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, I’m excited to announce the start of the Beyond Bucha Production Tour!

My mission? Go to church in Ukraine! Attending as many services and visiting as many churches as possible, especially Protestant/Evangelical places of worship, though I’ll also include Ukrainian Catholic and Orthodox congregations. My focus is on documenting Christian communities and their experiences amidst the war. Despite the claims of Tucker Carlson and his ilk, I doubt I’ll find many persecuted Christians here—unless we count Russian priests wearing ankle bracelets for spying, whom I’ll also be keeping an eye out for! I’m planning to visit Jewish services too and search for damaged churches and holy sites, though most of these are on the Russian-occupied side of the front, which I don’t plan to cross.

But first, I need to get there—and, just like my first trip in April 2022, it’s going to take some effort. I’m looking at a combination of planes, trains, and automobiles: starting with an overnight flight from Boston to Warsaw, where I am now, followed by an overnight sleeper train to Kyiv, and finally a car to Bucha. The good news is that this time, I’ll have Ubers at my disposal. On that first trip, I had to hike from Kyiv, all the while aware of the low-level threat of landmines.

It’s a three-day journey, though it could be done in two. But that’s beside the point. The bigger issue is that this extended travel time is still part of Putin’s economic blackmail. Ukraine’s airports remain closed—an ongoing hardship, despite Lviv being less than 50 miles from the Polish border. After two and a half years, Lviv's airport should reopen. Waiting for the fighting in Ukraine to completely cease is likely going to be long in coming, but with Patriot missiles and other defenses now in place, reopening the airport seems achievable. The economic and morale boost for Ukraine would be tremendous.

While I enjoy visiting Warsaw, I'd much prefer to fly over it on a direct flight to Lviv. It's frustrating that flights to these cities, once routine—even after the 2014 annexation of Crimea and the downing of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17—are still unavailable. Even if Russia were reckless enough to target civilian planes again, the repercussions with NATO and Putin's more hesitant allies would be severe. He knows this economic blackmail is a low-cost strategy for him, but we shouldn't allow it to persist.

Reopening flights to Lviv would be a powerful way to boost Ukraine’s economy and morale. It’s time. And I’d gladly sign up for the first direct flight to Lviv—then hop on a train to Kyiv.