The Evacuation Train. Rescue and a Humanitarian Mission

The evacuation train carries you ever further from your home. Alongside the carriages, villages, fields and forests rush past and fly away. The views beyond the window bring no joy at all, as they would in peacetime on a journey. In the half-darkness of the compartment mothers lull their children to sleep; ahead lies the unknown, but with it a deep faith in Victory and a hope of a swift return.

 

From its very first day the Russian invasion put Ukrainian Railways onto a war footing; the "railway" switched over at once to rescuing and evacuating Ukrainians to safe regions and abroad.

By the UN's estimates, around 10 million Ukrainians left their homes, and a third of them were carried by UZ. In the first month and a half alone, 3.5 million passengers were transported. The largest passenger flows came from Kyiv, Kharkiv and the Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Sumy regions.

Each day the railway company carried around 200,000 Ukrainians, putting every available train into service. The fourth-largest railway by volume on the Eurasian continent made every effort to move the greatest possible number of refugees. International services were organised to Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and the Czech Republic.

 

The railway stations stepped up the reception of passengers. Trains were pulled from their routes and redirected to the zone of active fighting. People were taken out along "green corridors" under enemy fire; stations and trains came under bombardment. In a country engulfed by war there are no safe places.

 

During the departure of refugees, about 4,000 passengers were at the station in Kramatorsk when a missile strike killed 57 people, among them 5 children. As a result of the shelling of carriages at Chaplyne station and of the residential district, 25 people died. Along with civilians, railway workers too are dying — people who perform feats of courage every day and have become the iron heroes of the war. Transport infrastructure is among the occupiers' priority targets.

 

In the first months of the evacuation the trains were overcrowded; at the platforms the carriages were besieged by crowds of refugees, mostly women with children. The capacity of the carriages was doubled and more. People filled the vestibules and corridors, with practically no free space left. The conductors had to be medics, and nannies, and psychotherapists all at once, never for a moment forgetting their duties and their responsibility.

 

On the way back the evacuation trains carry humanitarian cargo — medicines, water, food, dressings and children's things. The railway has turned into a machine for saving millions of Ukrainians. A year into the full-scale war in Ukraine, "Ukrzaliznytsia" does not halt its humanitarian mission and does everything for Victory over the enemy.

Related stories: The Siverskyi Donets River · The Pokrovsk-Pavlohrad-Lozova Suburban Train · Train 130 Kremenchuk-Vorokhta. Nadvirna to Mykulychyn · Truskavets. We Will Come After the Victory

This story is also available in Ukrainian: Евакуаційний поїзд. Порятунок та гуманітарна місія