Ukraine’s arteries: trains are the country’s lifeblood
Railways play a critical role in defending the country and bolstering morale
On November 4th 2024, the eve of America’s presidential election, Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, addressed a room full of railway workers. “Your movement is the movement of all Ukraine,” he told them. “You connect every corner of Ukraine, making it possible for Ukrainians to see their loved ones, despite everything.”
After Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Jelle Krings, a Dutch photographer, set out to capture the critical part that trains were playing in Ukraine’s war effort. In the early days of the war, Ukrainian forces destroyed their own railway infrastructure to halt the Russian advance. But when Ukraine liberated Kherson and Izium, workers got the trains up and running again in a matter of weeks.
Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, has claimed that Ukraine never truly existed. This was news to its railway workers, who are patiently waiting to stitch it back together again. The chances of this happening look increasingly slim, after Zelensky was excluded from negotiations between Putin and America’s new president, Donald Trump.
These photos document the logistical importance of the railways in such a large country – from evacuating refugees and supplying the front line, to sustaining Ukraine's struggling economy. But they also hint at something more intangible: keeping the trains going helps boost morale. For now, Ukraine’s 20,000km of railway tracks remain the vertebrae of a country that will not easily be divided.
During the mass exodus of Ukrainian refugees in the first weeks of the war, some people swam against the tide. Train drivers such as Dmitrii Prishedko (left) and Victor Bondar (right) returned to the most dangerous areas again and again to evacuate civilians
As an air-raid siren wails outside, two employees take shelter in a Soviet-era bunker at a rail-carriage factory in Kyiv. The danger is very real. In 2022 five Russian missiles targeted the site in a single attack, destroying several buildings
A couple cling to each other at Kramatorsk station in eastern Ukraine. Many of the men who volunteered to fight in the early days of the war expected to be demobilised after a year. Instead the army, facing a manpower crisis, is keeping them at the front indefinitely
Like all buildings of military and cultural significance, the regional headquarters of Ukrzaliznytsia, the national railway company, in Lviv are fortified with sandbags. A bronze bust of a former transport minister looks down on a woman walking unhurriedly past the building, despite blaring air-raid sirens
In April 2024 a Russian missile hit a five-storey residential building across the street from Dnipro’s railway station. This firefighter was pictured shortly after he found a dead body
“You connect every corner of Ukraine, making it possible for Ukrainians to see their loved ones, despite everything”
The Dnipro station attack killed three people and injured 24 more. Firefighters pulled 12 survivors from the wreckage
The eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, once home to 70,000 people, was known for its salt mines and sparkling wine. Taken by Russia after the longest battle of the war, it has been all but destroyed. Its once-busy railway station stands silent and dark
With their high ceilings and graceful arches, Ukraine’s railway stations, many of which date back to the Russian empire, are surprisingly beautiful. Kramatorsk station was completed in 1879, destroyed during the second world war and rebuilt in the 1950s – its grandeur intended to impress the glory of the Soviet Union on its passengers.
Today Ukraine’s railway stations are clean, modern and run by friendly, efficient staff. Stepping inside one, you feel – just for a moment – that life is back to normal. The tearful meetings and partings of soldiers and their loved ones dispel that illusion.
A Ukrainian soldier shelters in a decommissioned train near the eastern front
Kramatorsk station is tidy and its flower beds well tended, but its tranquility is deceptive. Steel wagons are parked on the tracks behind the benches to deflect shrapnel. In 2022 a cluster bomb fell on the station, killing 53 people and wounding 135
Valentyna kisses her husband Maksym as he returns to Kramatorsk from the front line for the first time in a year
“Ukraine’s railway stations, many of which date back to the Russian empire, are surprisingly beautiful”
“Stepping inside, you feel – just for a moment – that life is back to normal”
Natalia, a cleaner, continued to work at Kyiv station throughout the Russian advance as countless refugees boarded trains heading to western Europe
At least 751 employees of Ukrzaliznytsia have been killed since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion. Train drivers and conductors are not the only ones risking their lives – among the 185,000 people working on the railways are engineers, factory workers, repair workers, cleaners and administrators. According to the Ukrainian government, more than 10,000 railway workers are serving in the armed forces.
It is difficult to overstate how significant railways are to the defence of a country as big as Ukraine, which encompasses more than 600,000 square kilometres of territory. Trains carry tanks, troops and supplies up and down roughly 1,000km of the front line. They also bring weapons donated by Ukraine’s allies into the country.
In Izium a team of workers repair a stretch of the overhead electric line that has been damaged by shelling. Russian forces left the city in September 2022, leaving mass graves behind them. The railway station re-opened barely a month later
The rugged landscape of the Donbas, in eastern Ukraine, is littered with the remnants of railways that once sustained entire towns. Now those towns are under Russian occupation or bombardment. Many railway bridges, like this one, have been destroyed by Ukrainians to slow the Russians’ advance
Lyubov couldn’t have imagined how the night would unfold when she began her shift at Irpin railway station on the evening of February 23rd 2022, a few hours before the invasion. The battle for the town of Irpin lasted a month. Russian forces retreated at the end of March, but not before almost 300 Ukrainian civilians had been killed
Workers repairing railway tracks in Izium pause to watch a fighter jet fly overhead. Their work is risky – they are within range of the Russian artillery that did the damage to the tracks in the first place
On November 11th 2022, Kherson residents welcome Ukrainian troops after eight months of Russian occupation. Trains between Kherson and Kyiv were back up and running just one week later
Near Kharkiv, a Soviet anti-aircraft gun – moved into position by train – is ready to be loaded with 50-year-old shells. This more modern tank, manned by a gunner named Taras, was transferred hundreds of kilometres along the front by train
The tree trunks used to reinforce this trench, somewhere near Kherson, were transported to the front line by train
Stalin is said to have ordered the Soviet Union’s railways to use a different gauge from those of their European neighbours, to prevent invasions by rail. The story may be apocryphal – but it is true that Russia’s railway tracks are compatible with Ukraine’s, while most of Europe’s are not.
Ukraine’s first railways were built during the Russian empire and later expanded under the Soviet Union. Both the tsars and the communists saw Ukraine as a borderland at the far edge of their domain. The part of Ukraine’s railway company that serves eastern Ukraine is still called Southern Railways (as if it were still part of southern Russia). Earlier this month, Ukraine’s government announced this branch of the railway was to be renamed.
Even before the war, Ukraine’s railways were its arteries. They brought jobs and people to every corner of its vast territory – transforming communities such as Lyman, in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, from a small military garrison at the edge of what was then the Russian empire into a bustling city within the course of a few decades.
Multiple generations of the same families can often be found working side by side. Nina Rosokha helped run the railway’s heating system, her husband spent 36 years as a train driver, and their son Oleksandr worked as an engineer at Lyman’s depot until it was destroyed by Russian shelling. Nina was on her way home from the post office when a Russian artillery attack struck a busy market in the centre of Lyman. As a railway worker, her job made her a target – but she was killed, along with eight others, simply for being a civilian in a railway town.
Russia has broken the rules of war by targeting Ukrainian hospitals. Ukraine has responded by equipping hospital trains to evacuate thousands of wounded civilians from dangerous areas
A wounded railway worker is stretchered away from the scene of an accident near the eastern front. Ukraine’s railways make it possible for combat medics such as Leonid and Ivan to evacuate wounded soldiers, but this comes at a cost
Yulia, a medic, tends to the wounded on one of Ukraine’s hospital trains. Volodymyr (left) lost both his legs in a drone attack. Roman (right) lost his leg when he stepped on a landmine
Lyman was once home to more than 20,000 people. As the war enters its fourth year most civilians have fled, but some railway workers remain in the embattled city. For the soldiers defending the town, the railway is a lifeline that brings vital supplies to the front and takes their wounded comrades away from it. But as fighting intensifies around Lyman and the Russians continue their grinding advance, the situation will only become more dangerous for those who stayed behind. Sophie Watson
“Nina was killed, along with eight others, simply for being a civilian in a railway town”
At Nina Rosokha’s funeral, her daughter, Natalia, collapses over her mother’s body, insensible to the sounds of heavy fighting in the forest nearby
Lyubov (right) seeks guidance from an army priest (left) at a makeshift church in Lyman, Donetsk region. Now that the rest of the civilian population has fled Russian bombardment, Lyman’s railway workers live cheek by jowl with the military units defending the town
A wounded soldier lies still after being transported by train to a hospital behind the front line. A landmine explosion caused severe burns all over his body
At a hospital in the Dnipro region, wounded soldiers recover. One Ukrainian hospital train rescued nearly 4,000 people in a year
The carcass of a bombed-out train can be seen from the window of another train in Lyman. The town endured over four months of Russian occupation at the start of the war. Now Russia is bent on taking it back
“The railway is a lifeline that brings vital supplies to the front and takes their wounded comrades away from it”
PHOTOGRAPHS: Jelle Krings is an independent photographer, reporter and film-maker. His photo book for this project, “Iron People”, can be pre-ordered from jellekrings.com
