4 September 2024 early morning. It was then that the minute that divided Jarosław Basylewicz's life into “before” and “after”. A powerful fireball pierced the sky over Lviv, a minute later an detonation occurred that brightened the old buildings of western Ukraine. Then the darkness fell again. Jarosław heard the worst news: Yevhenija, Jaryna, Darija and Emilija Basylewicz are dead.
From the beginning of the invasion Russia terrorizes Ukraine's civilian population. The UN estimates that as of February 2022 the number of deaths among civilians has been over 14,000 and the number of wounded has been over 35,000. However, the actual number is most likely much higher. Moscow has late importantly intensified attacks with combat drones, maneuvering missiles, hypersonics, and glider bombs.
Although the Ukrainians have become accustomed to panic and death, the past of the Basilevicho household has truly shaken the full country.
It showed how dangerous life in Ukraine — even in places far from the front. In cities where most of the time there seems to be a average life, death lurks around each corner.. Through specified acts of terror, Moscow tries to break the tired Ukrainian wars.
On the night of September 4, 2024, sirens sounded in Lviv. There were dozens of drones and rockets flying towards town. In Ukraine it is nothing different — even in the west of the country, 800 km behind the front, 70 km from the Polish border. The Basylewicz household wanted to wait out the alarm in the stairwell. According to the explanation that the Ukrainians adopted in respective years of war, the Basilevichs did the right thing. It says that if there is no shelter nearby, you should hide in a place where there are only walls, without windows. That should guarantee safety.
Russian hypersonic Kindrazi missile However, he just hit the stairwell. He killed 4 Basylewicz women and their 3 neighbors. Photographs of the building following the attack were preserved — at the site where the stairs utilized to be, there remained a metre gap.
Basylewicz home after the attackJarosław Basilewicz / Die Welt
Jarosław Basylewicz was the only household associate at the time of the impact of the bullet in the advanced room, wanting to bring water. He thought if individual died in the attack, it was him. It's different. Just after the bullet hit the building, he was stunned, he bled and couldn't see for 1 eye. But he survived.
“People should not pay attention to me”
The year is 2025, a sunny Saturday of late summertime in the old town of Lviv. Couples sitting in cafes drink lattes, children run screaming between fountains. If the windows of the town hall on the ground level were not barricaded with sandbags, it would look like a completely average Central European city with an old Habsburg face.
Jarosław Basylewicz greets himself in German, learning the language at school and being able to have simple conversations. erstwhile the translator arrives, she sits in the cafe back to another guests. He's just taking off his sunglasses now. “People should not pay attention to me. Even if they recognized me, they should not show it, he says.
Basilewicz gained unwanted fame — reporter cameras caught him learning about the death of his household just after the hit. Like a bleeding and lost man moving after paramedics who carried the body of 1 of his daughters out of the building. As during a live ceremony ceremony, he stood on the edge, wearing a black shirt, with his face covered with wounds. Sustained by a friend, while in front of him 4 white coffins disappeared in the ground, and with them — all that was dear to him.
Jarosław Basilewicz in ceremony conduct during the farewell ceremony of his household members, 6 September 2024.Global Images Ukraine / Contributor / Getty Images
Yevhenija, his wife. They met due to her brother. A 43-year-old girl studied marketing and worked for European companies, and besides conducted yoga classes, designing clothes and jewelry. Basilewicz recalls that her “super power” was time management. “ Children always said about her: “Mom can do things that can’t truly be done at the time, ” she recalls.
Jaryn, 21. On the video that Basilevich has on his phone, he dances on camera. She graduated from the method University of Lviv, worked at the IT company and the office of the European Youth Capital 2025, which was appointed to Lviv.
Further string of article under video material
Darija, 18. Thanks to the scholarship, she studied cultural studies at the Catholic University of Lviv, took acting lessons. During puberty, she struggled with anxiety attacks, but over time they gave up. On Christmas 2023, little than a year before her death, her university published a movie in which Darija thanks in English Canadian donors who funded her scholarship. Shortly after the attack, she was scheduled to start her 3rd semester.
Emilija, age 6, played the piano and liked to swim. She went to second grade and already knew English well. “ She learned this language through animated films, and even took over the British accent,” Basilewicz says and smiles for a while. A fewer days after the attack, she would have turned seven.
As Basilewicz says, they were rather a average household facing the challenges of everyday life. Children began to research the world. possibly that is why their deaths caused specified a large stir.
“I wanted to convey what Ukrainians are experiencing”
Just after the attack, strangers approached Basilevich in a restaurant and wanted to pay for his meals, many people talked to him on the street. A man says he's grateful for the gestures, but sometimes it's all over him. any people want to be famous. I never wanted that, he says. He feels that in his grief he is constantly observed. He awakens suspicions erstwhile he has a better mood, and he has a right to do so. He does not give interviews to Ukrainian media due to the fact that more people admit him after them.
However, he tells abroad media about his story, even though it is hard for him. In February in Munich, at the invitation of a non-governmental organization, he gave a speech in German in which he accused Russia of wanting to destruct Ukraine “as a cultural nation and community of values”. “My desire was to represent Ukraine’s interests on this trip. I wanted to convey what the Ukrainians are experiencing so that the country could receive support and that abroad they could realize what was happening here," he says.
W Berlin met with Bundestag MPs and Friedrich Merz's assistant, in the Netherlands with the abroad Minister, and besides held talks with politicians in Washington. His interest in politics nevertheless expired. “I don’t see the point anymore,” he says. due to the fact that people in Europe have "probably not full understood how serious a threat can be". But he's not giving up. “I don’t know if I can make a difference, but I do what I can,” he says.
He's in charge of everyday things. They aid him meet friends. And small things. He learns English, goes to the gym. Again, he works — 2 to 3 hours a day, co-founding and managing a private boiler company.
"I don't even have the strength to hate. I feel alternatively empty”
What's next? Can you inactive have dreams after specified a tragedy?
— I'm not planning anything, says Basilewicz. - I'm killing time.
Meanwhile, the war against his country continues. And people in Russian raids are inactive dying, besides in the west of Ukraine. Basilevich inactive hears the sirens — the same sound that preceded the death of his family. “ But I don’t respond to them anymore,” he says. He presently lives outside the city, in a town where Russian missiles seldom fall on. “ Although what kind of bullet could be worse than that on September 4, 2024? ” he wonders.
— If we had stayed in our beds that tragic night, it would not have ended so badly, he says. The explanation that the staircase is safe proved to be wrong, at least in this case.
Jarosław Basilewicz in the center of LvivFlorian Saedler / Die Welt
In order not to go crazy, he had previously frequently referred to statistics. He frequently wondered what is the probability that in a city of 700,000 inhabitants specified a tragic communicative would happen to him. He believed that he was comparatively low, that in this mass of people he was reasonably safe. Now he's inactive wondering why all the rules and certaintys failed that night. But he knows he won't find the answer.
Russia has turned the planet of Jarosław Basyleivcza into an endless spiral of sadness and apathy. Still, he says he doesn't feel hate. It may sound strange, but I most likely don't even have the strength to hate. I feel alternatively empty,” he says.
So how can we live? Is it possible to live a peaceful life erstwhile you are left alone? Jarosław Basilewicz doesn't know that yet. But he fights for all fresh day, just like his country. It's a silent war that frequently dies in the shadow of a loud war with tanks and rockets.. But it is simply a war that will proceed to occupy Ukraine — even erstwhile the rifles are silent.
