Safety

Ukraine is a country at war. We plan like it.

You will not find reassurance on this page. You will find the actual protocol — where we go, where we never go, and what happens when a siren sounds. We publish it because you should be able to check our judgement before you trust it.

Last reviewed 10 August 2026. We date this page so you can see how fresh our judgement is, and we revise it whenever the picture changes.

What your own government says

Start here, not with us. Every government advisory tells you not to come, and you should read them before you read anything written by the people who would take your booking.

Canada: “Avoid all travel to Ukraine due to the Russian military invasion.” The advisory covers the whole country and makes no exception for the western regions.
United States: Level 4 — Do Not Travel, with particular emphasis on the frontline regions and the border with Belarus, and a warning that embassy assistance is limited.
United Kingdom: Advises against all travel to most of Ukraine, and against all but essential travel to the western regions — the only one of the three that draws the distinction we work within.

We do not argue with any of it. An advisory is written to cover everyone: the unprepared, the uninsured, the traveller who wanders east. Our answer is not that the advice is wrong — it is that we take on the responsibility the advisory assumes nobody has taken. A fixed western perimeter. War-risk insurance in force before you land. A briefed driver, a shelter plan for every day, and a written commitment to move your dates or return your money the moment we judge a journey unsafe. Read the rest of this page and decide for yourself. Some families read it and choose the filmed visit instead, and send us the questions their doctor raised. That is a good outcome too.

Where we operate — and where we never go

All journeys take place in western Ukraine: the Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk, Ternopil, Zakarpattia, Chernivtsi, Volyn, Rivne and Khmelnytskyi regions. These areas are hundreds of kilometres from the front line; daily life there carries on — schools, cafés, weddings, markets.

We do not take clients east or south of that perimeter, under any circumstances, at any price. If your family village lies in an unsafe region, we say so plainly — and offer research and a day in the nearest place we can safely reach instead, at our risk, not yours.

How you actually get there — the airspace is closed

There are no flights into Ukraine. Civil aviation has been shut since February 2022 and remains shut; anyone selling you a ticket to Lviv or Kyiv is selling something that does not exist. Every journey enters by land, and we plan that leg with you rather than leaving you to it.

You fly to Kraków, Warsaw or Rzeszów and we meet you at the airport. From there it is either the train from Przemyśl to Lviv — two to six hours, depending entirely on how long the border takes that day — or a car with our own driver. The crossing itself is a queue and a passport check, not a checkpoint out of a war film: families, students and grandmothers cross it every hour of the day.

Every itinerary carries a spare day for exactly this reason. Border queues are the least predictable part of the journey and also the least dangerous — and if a queue eats an afternoon, it eats a buffer day, not the morning at your great-grandmother’s church.

During an air alert

Air alerts do reach western Ukraine. They are usually declared for a whole region whenever something is airborne anywhere over the country, and most of them end with nothing at all. That does not make them theatre — it makes them routine, and routine is precisely what a protocol is for.

Every day's route is planned with known shelters along the way — before we set out
Your phone carries the official alert app, installed and explained on day one
Your driver is briefed, and the decision to pause a day is ours, made early and without drama
Most alerts in the west pass without incident; we treat every one by the book anyway

Curfew

A nationwide curfew has been in force since 2022. In Lviv and the western regions it currently runs from midnight to 5 a.m.; nobody is on the street in those hours without a permit, and it is enforced. In practice it changes almost nothing about your day — dinner ends, the city goes quiet, and you are back at the hotel long before it begins. Hours differ by region and can change at short notice, so we confirm them for every town on your route the week you travel.

What daily life actually looks like

The distance between the news footage and a street in Lviv on a Tuesday morning is the thing every returning client remarks on. Here is the honest version, including the parts that are hard.

The cities work: Cafés, trams, markets, churches, weddings, the school run. Restaurants are full and reservations are wise. Museums are open, though many keep their best pieces in storage.
Power is not guaranteed: Strikes on the grid mean scheduled outages in some seasons. Hotels and restaurants run generators; lifts, hot water and Wi-Fi can pause for a few hours. Bring a power bank — we carry spares and a charged car.
Cards work, cash still matters: Contactless is accepted almost everywhere, more readily than in much of North America. Village churches, cemetery caretakers and archive fees are cash in small hryvnia notes; we handle that on the day and itemise it for you.
Your phone will work: Mobile coverage is good and an eSIM is live before you land. On day one we install the official alert app, set it to your regions, and show you how to read what it tells you.
You will see the war: Flags along the new rows in every cemetery, photographs of the dead in the town square, men in uniform on the train, a funeral you did not plan to witness. Nobody hides it and neither will we. Most visitors tell us afterwards that the hardest part of the journey was not fear. It was grief.

Insurance

Ordinary travel insurance excludes war risks — quietly, in the fine print. Every journey we run includes a specialist policy with war-risk and medical-evacuation cover, arranged before you land. You receive the policy documents before you pay for it, so you can read exactly what is covered.

What your family at home sees

Every evening, your designated contact at home receives a short message: where you were today, where you sleep tonight, what happens tomorrow. They can also write to us directly on a messenger at any hour of the journey, and get an answer.

Health, age and honesty before booking

Village roads are rough, cemeteries are uneven ground, and some days are long. Before any booking we talk frankly about mobility and health, and shape the itinerary to the slowest member of the party — or advise a filmed visit instead. Nobody is sold a journey they should not make.

Documents and entry

A passport valid for the whole of your stay — we check the dates ourselves before anything is booked
Most of our clients enter without a visa and may stay up to 90 days in any 180. We confirm the rule for your particular passport in writing, Brazilian and Argentinian ones included, rather than letting you guess from a forum post
Medical insurance valid in Ukraine, which border guards may ask to see. The war-risk policy we arrange satisfies this and goes considerably further
Border questioning under martial law is more thorough than you are likely used to. You will be asked where you are going and why. “Visiting my great-grandfather’s village with a guide” is an ordinary answer, and we give you the itinerary and contacts on paper to support it

If you hold a Ukrainian passport

Under martial law, male Ukrainian citizens aged 18–60 are generally not permitted to leave Ukraine — and this applies even to citizens who have lived abroad their whole lives, if they ever held Ukrainian citizenship. Before anything is booked, we check this with you in writing. If there is any doubt about your citizenship status, we resolve it before you travel, not after.

What we will not do

A safety protocol is only worth reading if it names what it forbids. These are ours, and no amount of money moves them:

We do not go east or south of our western perimeter — not for a cemetery, not for a house, not for a single day trip
We do not take anyone to frontline areas, liberated towns or damaged sites as sightseeing. There is a name for that trade, and we are not in it
We do not travel with anyone whose war-risk policy is not already in force
We do not drive between cities at night
We do not photograph or film anything military — checkpoints, air defence, soldiers, damaged infrastructure. This is a criminal matter in Ukraine, and we brief you on it before you cross the border, not after
We do not continue a journey we judge unsafe, whatever the refunds cost us

If the situation changes

If the security picture worsens before your journey, we move your dates or return your money for everything not yet booked — your choice, agreed in writing before you pay anything. If it changes during a journey, the itinerary shortens westward or ends early. We say this in plain language now, because “force majeure” should not be a surprise hiding in clause 14.

The questions families actually ask

Is it safe to travel to western Ukraine in 2026?

Nobody honest will answer that with a plain yes. The western regions are hundreds of kilometres from the fighting and daily life there runs normally, but the whole country is under air alerts and every government advisory tells you to stay away. What we can say is narrower and checkable: in the west the risk is small, it is not zero, and everything we do — the perimeter, the insurance, the shelter plan, the refund clause — exists to keep it small and to carry the consequences if it is not.

Are there any flights to Ukraine?

No. Ukrainian airspace has been closed to civil aviation since February 2022 and remains closed. You fly to Kraków, Warsaw or Rzeszów in Poland and continue by train or car; the train from Przemyśl to Lviv takes two to six hours depending on the border queue. We meet you at the airport and stay with you through the crossing.

What actually happens during an air raid alert?

Your phone sounds, the app names the region, and you walk to the shelter we identified when we planned that day — usually a basement, a museum vault or an underpass minutes away. Most alerts in the west pass without incident and end within the hour. If alerts stack up, we pause the day: that decision is ours, made early, and it costs you nothing.

Is there a curfew, and will it affect my trip?

Yes, and barely. In Lviv and the western regions the curfew currently runs from midnight to 5 a.m. Your evening ends before it; the practical effect is that dinner finishes earlier than you might in Toronto or São Paulo. Hours vary by region, so we confirm them for your route in the week you travel.

Can I even get travel insurance for Ukraine?

Ordinary travel insurance excludes war risks in the fine print, so most policies you might buy yourself are void the moment you cross the border. Every journey we run includes a specialist policy with war-risk and medical-evacuation cover, arranged before you land, and you receive the documents to read before you pay for it.

My mother is 78 and wants to see the village. Should she come?

Sometimes yes, and sometimes the honest answer is no. Village roads are rough, cemeteries are uneven ground, shelter stairs are steep and days can be long. We talk through mobility, stamina and medication before anything is booked, shape the itinerary around the slowest member of the party, and if we think the journey is wrong for her we say so and offer the day in the village done for her instead — the village walked and recorded, and she watches from her own chair.

Practical guides

The three questions that come before everything else.

Before a family gets to church records they have to solve the journey itself: whether you can fly, how you cross, and what insurance actually covers. Each of these is answered in full on its own page.

Ask us the uncomfortable questions.

Write them down and send them — every worry your family has raised around the kitchen table. We have heard them all, and we answer them straight, in writing, within two business days.

Send a free request Or write us an email