Residential areas were pulverized, front lines shifted, millions of residents drifted adrift. But in the four weeks since Russia’s military entered Ukraine, there has been one constant: Ukrzaliznytsia. The train of the Ukrainian Railways continued to run.
Since the raid on February 24, the Railways evacuated more than 2 million refugees to neighboring Poland. The trains carried tanks, ammunition and soldiers to the front and shuttled government leaders up and down. The prime ministers of Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovenia traveled to Kiev last Tuesday to meet President Zelensky — by train.
Also read: Three European Prime Ministers by train to Kiev to support Ukraine
In this devastating war, the train seems untouchable, although there have been fatal incidents. On March 12, an evacuation train came under fire from Russian troops at Brusyn station, in the Far East. The train was supposed to pick up refugees from the separatist republic of Luhansk at Lyman station, a city founded by Cossacks in the 17th century. Hundreds of children were waiting on the platform when mortars slammed into near the track. A conductor was killed and his colleague was seriously injured.
That incident was the exception that proved the rule. “The trains will continue to run anyway. It’s safe here,” said Volodymyr Heyvakh, head of the night train between Kiev to Avdiivka terminal station, as I took the train to the Eastern Front five days before the Russian invasion. There was something absolute about that statement, like a fact that no power, however brutal, could tamper with.
The long-distance trains are painted in the blue and yellow of the national flag. The sleeping quarters are full of soldiers – reinforcements for the front. The heating is fired with coal, which is warmer than is comfortable.
More than 230,000 Ukrainians work for the railways, more than twice the population of Odessa. Of them, 33 have been killed since the start of the war, according to a headquarter count. Ukrzalinytsia is the backbone of Ukraine, the railway connecting the western agricultural lands with the heavy industry in the east. 23,000 kilometers long, the twelfth longest track in the world, linking Ukraine to Poland to the west, Belarus to the north. Moldova, Romania, Slovakia, Hungary to the west and the Black Sea and Sea of Azov to the south.
The train also runs to Russia, but the separation of Luhansk and Donetsk has largely blocked that connection to the east. The first rails were laid in the second half of the nineteenth century, more than one hundred and thirty years before the moment when the fledgling nation-state Ukraine wrested itself from the Soviet empire.
But don’t you dare call the train Russian. “We have no Russian trains. This is a train of concerted effort. The wheels are made in Luhansk, the carriages in Lviv, the engines in Moscow,” says Svitlana Mysyailo, who has been working at the Lviv station for thirty years. “Soviet, yes.”
Her blood is as mixed as the trains: her father was born in Poland, her mother in Ukraine. “I feel European. I say what I think, what’s on my mind, and what my eyes see. I’m free,” she says. Four weeks of war has turned Lviv station into a reception center for refugees, occupying every inch of the floor in the station concourse and the hotel on the first floor. The day before the raid, Mysailo had hopes that war could be prevented. “I don’t think it will happen,” she said. “Where Russia has intervened, destruction and death reign. But if it happens, I’ll take up arms. We will defend our country.”
First 23 km of track
War has been linked to this train since the construction of the first track. During the Crimean War, in 1855, British soldiers built the first 23 kilometers of track to carry heavy military equipment in the fight against the Russian Empire. In World War II, the Germans bombed Sebastopol, the port city in Crimea, with the Schwerer Gustav railway gun, which was so heavy that it could only be transported by train. Sevastopol was destroyed.
Today’s war started not on February 24, but eight years ago, with the capture of Crimea and the Russian occupation of Luhansk and Donetsk. That war has not only separated the country, but also families, fathers of daughters.
Also read this report from eastern Ukraine: ‘War? We’ve been at war here for eight years!’
“I haven’t spoken to my father in seven years,” said Valeriya Rakytyanska, a student on the train from Lviv to Kiev to pick up her mother. She was born in the Donetsk region. Her parents are divorced and live on either side of the eastern divide: her mother on the western side, her father on the eastern.
“My father runs a club called ‘White Night’. One day, the Russian separatists came to the club with their armored vehicles. My father was so proud that they had come to his club: he posted a video on Facebook when the soldiers drove their vehicles in circles in front of his club. Honestly, I don’t miss him. I don’t even have his phone number.”
Since the outbreak of the war, the tables with departure and arrival times no longer apply. Tickets are no longer necessary, even outside the borders of Ukraine. The German railways, Thalys and other major European trains provide free transport across the continent for Ukrainian refugees, a privilege that never existed for refugees from other contemporary wars.
Before the invasion, the Ukrainian conductors were drilled for the day of the raid. Everyone had their own exit plan. “I have agreed with my husband what we will do if Kiev is bombed,” says conductor Olena Adamenko on the train between Lviv and Kiev. “My husband will wait at home for six hours until the children are home. If they don’t come within that time, he drives out of town and waits for them in the woods, at an agreed location. I told them not to worry about me. I’ll come home if I have to walk.”
Before the east was occupied, Adamenko traveled regularly to Moscow. Not with pleasure. “They Called Me”chochlushka‘” she says. A Russian swear word for Ukrainians. “I didn’t like that. But I also have a lot of acquaintances and friends there.” Since the invasion, the conductor has been unreachable.
The sleeping quarters are full of soldiers. The heating is fired with coal, warmer than is comfortable
The Russian invasion force is targeting the railways. The first thing Russian troops captured when they captured the city of Kherson on the Black Sea on March 1, was the city’s train station. But for the time being, that is the only major station in Russian hands.
Many cities in the east would never have existed without a train. Pokrovsk was founded in 1875 by decree of the Ministry of Railways of the Russian Empire, due to its proximity to one of the largest coal reserves of present-day Ukraine. The train to the east is like a colonial train, with which Stalin later sent large groups of Russians to the east. Pokrovsk was hit by Russian artillery this week. According to Ukrainian sources, the Russians used cluster munitions, intended to hit as many civilians as possible. According to the Russians, the shooting was an accident.
“A war doesn’t start the day they physically shoot you,” says Juliana, holding her husband Sergeij’s hand tightly. The newly married couple are among the last passengers on the eastbound train. “Fear gets into your head and heart. We don’t want the emotions to take over our lives.” They are on their way to the birthday of their parents, who live at the Avdiivka terminal station – the balcony of their house has already been hit by fragments of a mortar shell. But the parents continued to live there. Sergeij’s brother works at the station.
Minefield along the train
Avdiivka is a western suburb of Donetsk. The inhabitants have learned to live with the shelling. The limestone walls along the first platform show evidence of shards and artillery fire. The track ends here on sandbags. Across the street is an apartment building that was badly damaged in a 2014 battle between Ukrainian army tanks and Russian separatists. The Ukrainian army managed to recapture the suburb from the separatists in 2014. A minefield east of the train tracks should prevent the Russians from taking Avdiivka after all.
The towns and villages along this front line emptied out over the past eight years of the war. Those who stayed behind consciously chose the dangers of war. “I’m not suicidal or anything,” said Oleksiy Savkevych, a schoolteacher who lives less than three hundred meters from the Russian troops as the crow flies. In 2015, a tank grenade blew the roof off his shed. He was not at home at the time. He has plans to convert the battered shed into a sauna.
“Of course I often thought about leaving. But then I have to rent elsewhere in the country. And I have a large Saint Bernard dog and three cats,” he says, stroking the laziest of the cats on his fur. “People in the west are much more concerned about the war than we are. We have learned to live with it.” Three days after he uttered those words, the Russians invaded.
Avdiivka came under heavy fire last week. A rocket landed in the chemicals factory. 99 civilians were evacuated, including 35 children. But not teacher Oleksiy Savkevych. “I’ve decided to stay in my city,” Savkevych said in a video message from last weekend. “I volunteered to help defend the city against attacks by the Russian Federation,” he says before stopping the recording. His wife, his sixteen-year-old son, the Saint Bernard and the three cats are still in Avdiivka.
The VPRO program will broadcast the documentary next Thursday, March 24th The train to war out, on NPO 2, 8:25 PM.
A version of this article also appeared in NRC Handelsblad on 19 March 2022
A version of this article also appeared in NRC in the morning of March 19, 2022
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