Just an hour earlier, a Russian-made missile had flown out of Ukrainian territory, killing two of his parishioners and shattering the illusion that geography and international law would protect the villagers. “The physical borders here also separated us mentally from the war [in Ukraine]. We’ve always felt that way,” Wazny said, the day after the rocket landed. “We never felt the danger here.” Now, however, fear, terror and a sudden swarm of police and military kept worshipers at home as news of their personal tragedy began to spread around the world, morphing into a geopolitical crisis. The nightmare that Kyiv and its allies had been warning about for months had come true: the war in Ukraine had spilled over the country’s borders and thrust this sleepy hamlet, just four miles from the border, into the international spotlight. “We’ve talked about it in the past, but I’ve never felt seriously threatened,” said Justine Mazurek, who was born in the village 71 years ago. “Of course, I knew the war was going on, but I never heard any explosions.” A day later, he says he still can’t believe two men he knew well were killed by a missile. “People are scared, but they still haven’t had enough time to talk to each other, to process it.” Within hours, US President Joe Biden and Polish leaders said they believed the missile, though Russian-made, was fired by Ukraine in self-defense. This eased the fear of escalation, but did nothing to ease the pain in Przewodów. The village is small enough that everyone knew the victims. It has a registered population of 900, but only 600 actually live here – like parts of eastern Poland, it has lost many of its young people to emigration. “We’ve been hitting each other all the time and now he’s not here anymore,” Mazurek said after attending the service where Wazny prayed for the dead – fathers and faithful churchgoers killed while working at a grain sorting center. One was married to a woman who worked at the school, so overnight, principal Ewa Byra went from overseeing education for 71 students to organizing psychological support for a traumatized community. “We [in Przewodów] managed to calm down after February 24th [when Russia invaded Ukraine] despite the fact that we live next to war,” Byra said. “Emotions had subsided and we managed to cope. But yesterday’s event reawakened those feelings.” The school, where a poster reading “safety first” hangs in the main hall, had already closed for the day the rocket hit, but was empty again the next day, with parents too scared to send their children at the classes. a few hundred meters from the site of the explosion. “It was very fresh. This is a very difficult experience for them,” Byra said. It has already begun connecting children and their parents with psychologists and trauma specialists, who have come from larger cities in the area. “Psychological help started today,” he said, describing an online meeting to connect people with first, basic support. Byra expects recovery to be difficult for a community now living with the reality that war crossed the border once, and may do so again. “We try as much as possible to keep life normal – the children’s feelings are the most important thing.” She also hosted a night of journalists, part of an overwhelming influx into the city, where country roads were buzzing with military and police cars. Police had cordoned off a large area of land around the missile site as investigators tried to figure out what happened. The rocket landed just before 4pm local time on Tuesday as light fell from the sky. By Wednesday morning the remote village had become world famous, swarming with journalists and police. “Unfortunately, for this tragic reason, everyone will remember Przevodov. We would rather our village had remained dark, and these two were both alive.’
