The vital nature of the railways has transformed the way they are run. When the war started on February 24th, the system’s management triggered a secret plan worked out in advance for a national emergency. Female staff with families were evacuated abroad. Train drivers were recalled from retirement. Meanwhile a core management team packed suitcases for an as yet unclear period on the road. That central team has been in charge of strategy for the past 22 days, making decisions from aboard randomly chosen trains to avoid being hit by the Russians. Operational decisions have mostly been delegated to station managers, who work with military police around the clock to ensure as safe a passage for staff and passengers as they can.
Petro Stetsuk, the controller at Kyiv’s central station, is but one of a number of war heroes keeping the railways running. The former head of Ukraine’s transport police and a 30-year veteran of the railways, 60-year-old Mr Stetsuk has been camped alongside the tracks for the past three weeks. It has been a constant battle, fought alongside a slimmed-down staff of 60 railway workers. They have repaired the station after it was damaged by a falling rocket; turned the station’s east vestibule into a soup kitchen, field hospital and psychological clinic; and put more than 2m frantic fellow Ukrainians on evacuation trains to the west. Passenger flows are now less than the highs of late February, when close to 80,000 flowed through the station daily. But the work continues to be taxing. “My main job is keeping my people calm so they can make good decisions,” Mr Stetsuk says. He laughed: “Plus, of course, finding the train drivers, the carriage assistants, preparing the trains, calling the end stations, and making sure people aren’t blown up en route.”
I spent some time talking to the little heroes of Ukraine’s rail system — the brave drivers and staff moving refugees, the wounded and essential supplies. https://t.co/YuydE5BVMY
— Oliver Carroll (@olliecarroll) March 18, 2022