Ukraine's railways have kept the country running since Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022. But attacks are intensifying, with more than half of all strikes on locomotives since then occurring this year alone, according to the state-owned operator. Yuliia Ponomarenko, 27, a marketing specialist from Kharkiv, found her journey to Warsaw last month suddenly interrupted just short of the Ukraine-Poland frontier.
"The border guards started running around and shouting "Run! Get out of the carriages! There's shelling!" A Russian drone had just hit a locomotive near the same border, and a special train carrying former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and other European dignitaries, had passed through minutes before.
Passengers on Yuliia's train were kept waiting for six hours while the fire up ahead was put out and the line cleared, she says: "We were really lucky that we were delayed a little and it wasn't our train." She is among an increasing number of Ukrainian passengers facing disruption and long delays, as air raid alerts trigger emergency evacuations far from the battlegrounds of the east. In September alone, 5,831 trains had to be evacuated due to Russian drone attacks, state owned railway operator Ukrzaliznytsia told news agency on Monday. This meant on average each day, 205 trains were stopped.
It appears to be part of a wider assault on Ukraine's infrastructure, with two bridges attacked in Kyiv in the past few days and passengers of a metro train caught up in one of the strikes. Seventeen-year-old Anastasiia Ryvbalchenko has also experienced a narrow escape. She and her fellow passengers were forced to leave their train at 4am, towards the end of a long of a journey from Odesa to Kirovohrad on 16 September.
"On my way to Odesa, there had been a lot of evacuations and now on my way back it was happening again," she says. "I was already thinking that if there was another evacuation, I just couldn't take it any more." An hour and a half later, as passengers waited in the dark, a drone struck nearby. "There was an extremely loud explosion and everyone started running into the woods," she said.
It is not clear what the target was, and in this case the train was not damaged, but with further explosions lighting up the night sky, Anastasiia decided not to linger, continuing her journey on foot before being picked up by her parents. "I'm not going to travel by train anymore," she says. Anastassia's journey was more dramatic than most, but delays – some brief, others that last for hours – are now commonplace.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
