Two institutions have played a crucial role in thwarting Russia’s plan to conquer Ukraine. One is the Ukrainian army. It successfully defended the capital, Kyiv, and has recaptured large swathes of territory seized last year by Moscow in the north-east and south. Another counteroffensive looms. The second – surprisingly, perhaps – is Ukraine’s railway.
This network with 15,000 miles (24,000km) of track is Europe’s third largest. It has become a lifeline for the war-torn country. Since Vladimir Putin’s invasion the railway has helped bring civilians to safety. It has transported 4 million people and an estimated 120,000 pets. Eight million have fled abroad and 6.2 million are internally displaced, in the continent’s biggest refugee crisis since 1945.
The railways have made another contribution to the war effort, enabling soldiers to return from battle and to spend time with loved ones. The morale of Ukrainian soldiers is high, in contrast to their demoralised Russian adversaries. Special trains evacuate the wounded. Some are service personnel; others are residents caught up in shelling. Travelling doctors treat the injured.
The main hall of the train station in Bakhmut, damaged by Russian shelling
The Dutch photographer and multimedia journalist Jelle Krings has documented the activities of drivers, railway workers and passengers, during an extraordinary year in which Ukraine has defied Russia. His exhibition Iron People includes photographs, video and a short documentary film. The images are moving, vivid and sometimes poignant: a portrait of a nation on the move, fighting for its survival.
Krings, 32, was in Poland last spring when Russia’s all-out attack began. He took photos of refugees as they poured across the border, tens of thousands arriving each day, most of them women and children. In early March he went to Ukraine and documented refugees as they arrived into Lviv’s central station, on refugee trains from the east.
He interviewed drivers before they returned to the frontline. “I was inspired by their sheer courage and sense of duty. They were ordinary people who risked their lives to save others. Overnight they essentially became war zone rescue workers,” he said. In May and June he travelled to Kharkiv and the Donbas region and last autumn visited liberated areas in Kharkiv oblast and the southern city of Kherson.
Krings spoke with employees who restored railway tracks in heavily mined locations, newly freed from Russian troops. He visited repair factories targeted by enemy missiles. This year he spent time with rail workers in their homes, listening to their stories of life under bombardment and enemy occupation, and shooting their portraits.
A worker works on new train parts in the Kyiv train depot factory
Railway repair workers during a day of work on a stretch of track destroyed by shelling
A worker of the Kyiv train depot factory cleans up debris left by a Russian rocket strike on the factory. Right; as an air raid alarm goes off, factory workers move underground to a Soviet-era bunker
“The railway system shows the resilience and confidence of Ukraine as a people. You find this across Ukrainian society,” Krings said. He described the process of editing his pictures as an “emotional ride”. “There are refugees peering out of the windows. They have these looks, filled with grief and loss. Railway workers help them at great personal risk and sacrifice. You see and feel everyone’s pain,” he said.
Krings photographed the body of a woman who collapsed and died, after getting on a packed evacuation train. She lay under a blue blanket at Lviv station. In Pokrovsk in Donbas he watched as train attendants hefted a bedridden 71-year-old woman onboard. Days earlier a bomb hit a carriage carrying humanitarian aid. “There was a loud bang and smoke rose above the tracks,” he said.
Ludmilla Chutko, 71 – who had difficulties walking since a fall before the war – is carried on an evacuation train by workers from Ukrainian Railways, police and her son Vladimir Chutko, 47. She says they had to leave because the situation deteriorated and the shelling became too much to bear.
Serhii, 12, playing cards with another refugee on an evacuation train heading to Lviv from Pokrovsk. Karina (30), waiting to be carried on an evacuation train and transported to a hospital in Lviv. Karina incurred a severe back injury during a Russian shelling of her village Borivske near Sievierodonetsk. She can only lie faced down.
Ukrainian trains are known for their punctuality, with more than 90% arriving on time. The war has not affected performance, in part because engines never go especially fast, rolling at 55mph. Carriages are clean and comfortable: the best way of getting around a vast country. Stewards look after night train customers and bring them morning tea in filigree holders.
Refugees from Ukraine rest in the gym of a primary school in Poland, turned into a temporary shelter. Most refugees stay in the school for a few days to a week, before continuing their journey for shelter elsewhere in the EU
With airports closed, the railway has a political function as well, delivering important international guests. They include the US president, Joe Biden, who in February dropped in to see Volodymyr Zelenskiy in Kyiv, days before the invasion anniversary. It was a 20-hour trip both ways. Numerous prime ministers and VIPs have used the train including Boris Johnson, Keir Starmer and Bono from U2.
Krings grew up in a village outside Amsterdam. As a teenager, he would take the train into the city, returning late at night. The journey, he recalled, took 10 minutes. In Ukraine the distances are bigger, with the trip from Pokrovsk to Lviv lasting 36 hours. Services have reopened in territory seized back from Russia, including from Kyiv to Kherson, occupied by Moscow for eight brutal months.
An evacuation train ran by Médecins Sans Frontières carrying refugees from Donbas at the train station of Dnipro
The railway employs 230,000 people. Three hundred have died since the war started, 19 of them while on duty. Working for the state-owned company is seen as a respected profession with stable hours. There are train “families” where several generations do the same job. Previously Krings covered the climate crisis in Africa and the refugee crisis. He is interested, he says, in covering subjects in depth and “humanising” complex geopolitical issues.
Angelina and Kosta say their goodbyes through the window of an evacuation train heading to Poland. Angelina is pregnant with their child. Under martial law imposed after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, men between the ages of 18 and 60 are not allowed to leave the country
Krings plans to exhibit his photos in train stations and museums, and as a multimedia project in Amsterdam. Some material is harrowing. One interviewee, Tetiana Vislohuzova, recalled how she evacuated an 11-year-old girl who lost both her legs in a missile strike. The train manager spoke with another six-year-old boy who told her he watched as his friend was “torn apart” by a strike.
Ukrainian serviceman Dima and his newly wedded wife Veronica on their wedding day during Dima’s break from the frontline - June 2022.
Overall, railway workers are a remarkable and brave group. “They have seen more grief than even people on the frontline. There is so much trauma. But they keep showing up no matter the risk,” Krings said.
Luke Harding’s Invasion: Russia’s Bloody War and Ukraine’s Fight for Survival is published by Guardian Faber. To support The Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
