Refugee trains out of Ukraine and the people who keep them running

The header image above shows a woman nurturing her baby in a carriage reserved for children with special needs on the evacuation train from Kryvyi Rih to Chop.

Refugee trains out of Ukraine and the people who keep them running is a shortened version of an article published on 31 March 2022, in The Guardian Newspaper. This edited article is republished under the Guardian Newspaper’s Open Licence Terms for non-commercial websites. Guardian Newspaper byline: by Shaun Walker in Kyiv. Photographs by Jelle Krings.

The hyperlinks within the article lead to stories on The Guardian’s website.

Windows shuttered and lights dimmed, a darkened train pulls into a station platform, also unlit. As the train comes to a halt, carriage attendants toss boxes of humanitarian aid to station workers waiting on the platform.

Huddles of passengers, who arrived at the station hours earlier so as not to be on the streets during curfew hours, search in the inky blackness for the right carriage, before the train is on its way again with a gnashing of wheels and a long hiss of steam.

This scene has played out at stations across Ukraine repeatedly over the last month, as Ukrainian Railways has been engaged in one of the most impressive elements of Ukraine’s war effort. Several million people have travelled west to safety on evacuation trains, while the carriages have returned east packed with tonnes of humanitarian aid.

Ukrainian Railways employs more than 230,000 people, and almost all its employees have stayed in the country to work, according to Oleksandr Kamyshin, the company’s CEO. While stations in the areas under Russian occupation are now closed, the trains have continued running even to cities like Kharkiv, which has been under constant Russian fire.

Since the war started 64 employees have died and 71 have been injured, he said, counting incidents at work and those at the homes of employees.

“If the track is blown up, we repair it. If we can get somewhere, we go. It may be dangerous for our staff, but then that train can save thousands of other people from danger,” said Kamyshin, in an interview at Kyiv’s central station. He and a small “mobile command centre” of seven people has spent the last month crisscrossing the country on trains, to show support for staff working in all parts of the country.

At the peak of the evacuation programme, 200,000 people a day were travelling west, on trains that were made free of charge for everyone, with women and children having priority.

There were heartbreaking scenes at Kyiv’s central station during the early part of the war, as residents feared the capital could face the same fate as Mariupol, Kharkiv and other cities and scrambled to get out as quickly as possible. The trains were often crowded, uncomfortable and sweaty inside, but they did the job. In the first two weeks of the war alone, 2 million passengers were taken to safety.

Dmytro Yaroshenko, 36, has been working on the railway since he was 20. He is now the train manager on the 82 train, running between Uzhhorod in the far west, on the Slovakian border, and Kyiv.

“We turn the lights off for the section of the journey around Kyiv, and anywhere that might be dangerous, as well as if the train stops. Who knows who might be hiding in the bushes,” he said, on a recent journey towards the Ukrainian capital.

He said he had no qualms about continuing to work during wartime, and saw his own role as part of the overall Ukrainian war effort.

Eugen Zagoruk – Train driver on the route Lviv to Przemyśl in Poland.

Continue reading Refugee trains out of Ukraine and the people who keep them running on The Guardian Newspaper’s website: The people who keep the refugee trains running out of Ukraine – photo essay.

Dive Deeper: Other Ukraine Coverage. Recent posts are listed below.