On the morning of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Ukraine’s railway institution Ukrzaliznytsia started sending trains into war zones to evacuate civilians. Railway workers reporting for work that morning had become rescue workers overnight. They answered the call. Tetiana Vyslohuzova, a train master who had worked for Ukraine’s railway institute all her life, was one of those people. This is the story of one of her evacuation missions.
In the two years of war that followed Russia’s invasion, Ukraine’s 15,000-mile railway network and the workers responsible for operating it have played a vital role in Ukraine’s effort to withstand the invasion. Despite Russian strikes continuously targeting Ukraine’s critical infrastructure, the railway network has stayed largely operational. This has given millions of Ukrainians a chance to escape the violence of the war: an estimated 6,5 million people were brought to safety by train.
Around 230,000 railway people work for the Ukrainian railways. This includes train drivers, repair workers, train attendants and conductors, factory-, depot- and station workers and more. Over the course of the war over 1,100 railway workers were wounded and over 450 were killed. Some of them were fighting on the frontlines, others were in their homes when missiles struck, working in trains or along the tracks when mines exploded.
Tetiana’s story represents the sheer courage and sense of duty of Ukraine’s railway workers and shows how their work contributes to the country’s ability to withstand the Russian invasion.
Directed by Jelle Krings (Netherlands)