Kyiv, Ukraine –
It’s 9pm on Saturday October 8th and we’re sitting on a train just inside Ukraine. A very slow, stop-and-start train from Poland. We are in a sleeping car, car 29, in seats 82 to 85. It is comfortable, except for the long wait during which the Ukrainian border guards confirm the details of the passengers. We hand our passports to a young woman in military uniform, with glossy red lips. She smiles as she adds mine to a pile of at least 50 passports in her left hand.
She is followed by two other border guards who look in our compartment and inquire about the contents of our bags. One of them is wearing braces. He’s young. He points to a large suitcase on the floor. “Clothes?” I didn’t tell him that it also contained a bulletproof vest, helmet, first aid kit and potassium iodide pills to protect against radiation poisoning. “Yes, clothes.”
He said something in Ukrainian that included the word “drug”. My colleague Marc D’Amours and I giggled in quick denial. “No drugs. Just vodka. And indeed a bottle of Polish Zubrowka, the kind that has a piece of buffalo grass floating inside, had softened the frustration of the wait.
The train is full of Ukrainians returning home, loaded with heavy suitcases, struggling to drag them along the narrow passage to their compartments. There are mostly women and children, as men are not allowed to leave the country and many are probably on the front line.
It’s so different now, so much calmer than just a few months ago, when roads, trains and buses were jammed with millions leaving, desperate to save their lives. Looking back with concern to see their towns, villages and neighborhoods under Russian bombardment.
Their relaxed faces that Saturday night revealed both a sense of confidence and an absence of the fear that marked their initial flight to safety. It now seems normal to come home; the trepidation disappeared.
We should arrive in Kyiv around 10 am – we should, as in, hope. As I write, the train has started rolling again. This is not one of those fast, sharp European trains. This one rumbles, bumps and bounces, but it feels safe and reliable.
The middle-aged driver in car 29 has a small bedroom at the end of the car. When I pass, she shares a dinner in a plastic container with a colleague. That looks nice.
She speaks with authority and few smiles, quite serious in her work. Maybe that’s something that changed with the war. The trains have been a lifeline for the country, as they have kept masses of frightened families out of the path of advancing Russian forces. We have noticed that car windows are now covered with transparent plastic tape, protection against splinters in the event of an attack. It wasn’t like that the last time we took a Ukrainian train.
This day was quite memorable. When we last traveled this road, at the start of the war, we saw burning Ukrainian fuel tanks in the distance, hit by Russian missiles. Today, Ukrainians are devastated by the news that a vital bridge linking Russia to the Crimean Peninsula has been attacked and badly damaged. People are glued to their phones trying to figure out how, with what and who carried out this audacious act of sabotage on one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s most prized achievements. This is the bridge he built to glorify his illegal annexation of Crimea.
It feels like the war is turning. A tweet asks what movie Putin is watching tonight: A bridge too far? Ukrainians are scathing in their comments.
The train stops again, in Lviv. It’s about 11:30 p.m. We’ll be here two more hours. I know the city well now, that’s where I arrived on February 21, three days before Russia launched its invasion, and Ukraine seemed doomed. He no longer feels condemned.
The Ukrainian armed forces have “deoccupied” large tracts of land in the northeast and south around Kherson. Places we had never heard of before, but which have become familiar battlefields, just as the towns and villages of Normandy were in 1944. Europe is at war again.
People dare to use the word “collapse” to describe the turbulent performance of Russia’s great army, unable to hold territory it brutally seized, plundered and destroyed just months ago. The soldiers desert. The young men refuse to fight. Putin is the subject of mockery on Ukrainian social networks.
Car 29 went silent. People made their beds and closed their compartment doors. The train will soon start rocking and banging again in the direction of Kyiv. Sleep will be a struggle and a gift, if it comes.
—
I woke up early, I slept little. A night of kicking and bouncing and thumping in the dark, crawling slowly east. There was no rhythm to our movement, rather a jerky, tenuous progression.
The sun shines through the window, providing a sense of time. It’s just after 7 a.m. that I swing to the bathroom with a toothbrush and a bottle of water. The conductor is at her table, dressed in the same clothes, writing something in a notebook. She looks up but doesn’t respond to my “Hello”.
It’s a tribute to the crew that we arrived on time. As the passengers begin to exit, a young man with a bouquet of flowers quickly moves down the aisle and into the next compartment, where a young woman is gathering her things.
They are still locked in a deep embrace as I pass several times with bags. I wonder how long they’ve been apart. Is he now a soldier? I want to ask, but I can’t bring myself to disturb such an intimate moment. The war has already disrupted enough Ukrainian lives.