Ukraine’s railway workers are helping the war effort and keeping spirits high
Lesson summary
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Coming up today: There is not a lot of good news in Ukraine. But one group of workers is serving the country heroically, and they symbolize the resilience of the Ukrainian people under impossible circumstances. You’ll hear their story today. You’ll also learn what it means to “work around the clock.” And we have a song of the week. Let’s get going.
Ukraine’s ‘second army’ of rail workers
Ukraine has been fighting a war for eight months. Last March, Russia began an unjustified invasion , breaching sovereign Ukrainian territory, raining missiles on civilians and infrastructure, and leaving a legacy of torture and atrocity.
The war is not going well for Russia—meaning that Russia is not achieving its war aims. Ukraine has recently recaptured critical provinces. Russia’s military is depleted; sanctions are making it difficult to replenish critical supplies . Both sides are said to have lost over 100,000 people to the conflict. There is not a lot of good news.
But there are some people who—and this is an incredible story—they’re working around the clock to keep Ukraine’s people and economy moving, and they’re serving as an inspiration to the Ukrainian people. They are the workers of Ukraine’s national railway.
Before the war started, Ukraine’s population was over 43 million; in terms of land area, it’s about the same size as France. The country is crisscrossed by railways, many of which were built during the Soviet era. Today , they’re an essential part of Ukraine’s war effort and its wartime economy. And the people who make the railways operate—the rail workers—are a symbol of hope and resilience for the Ukrainian people.
Start at the beginning. In the first weeks of the war, Ukrainian Railways helped evacuate four million people, most of whom headed west toward Poland. Lviv is the biggest city in the east, just 70 kilometers from Poland. Before the war, Lviv’s main train station—a gorgeous building, by the way—Lviv’s main train station handled an average of 5,000 passengers a day. In the days after the war started, it was seeing 100,000 passengers a day.
Many Ukrainians packed onto trains, hoping to get into Poland. The trains kept coming, packing people in, and taking them east in an orderly evacuation.
Ukraine also uses its railways to power its war effort, transporting soldiers, weapons, and supplies. Incredibly, the country continues to produce wheat and other commodities for export. Before, these might have gone by road. For safety reasons, much of that traffic has shifted to the rails. The railway adapted cars and routes in the middle of wartime to accommodate both war and export shipments.
Train crew members work around the clock; some catch just a couple of hours of sleep a day before going back on the job. Operators have mandatory rest for safety, but the stewards and other workers often put in 45-hour shifts; that’s almost two full days. Like nurses in a hospital, the train crew members double as counselors for passengers. They listen to stories, give advice, provide information, and empathize with their fellow citizens. At night, they do their work in the dark: the lights are kept off for safety.
And they do this amid danger. Russia knows all too well that Ukrainian Railways are a key to the country’s economy and war effort. So the railways have been a target of Russian missiles. Train crew give passengers advice on the overnight trains: sleep with your feet toward the window in case the train gets shelled.
When Russian missiles hit critical rail infrastructure, workers jump into action, re-routing trains and beginning repairs.
Ukrainian Railways employs over 200,000 people. Many workers left to join the war effort. But the director of the railways says that no workers—none—refused to do their job out of fear for their safety. The trains operate in any areas that are not controlled by Russia.
I mentioned earlier that Ukraine is taking back territory that Russia had conquered earlier in the war. When that happens, Ukrainian Railways sells a commemorative tourist ticket that the re-conquered territory, redeemable when service resumes. They’re called “tickets to victory.”
Ukraine’s train workers are also on the front lines of diplomacy. Airspace over Ukraine is shut down; you can’t fly to Kiev. So when foreign dignitaries visit Kiev for a meeting with Volodymyr Zelensky , they first fly to Poland and they take a ten-hour train ride to the capital, sometimes for just a one-hour meeting.
The railways have this covered. They realize they have an unprecedented opportunity: they have the captive attention of world leaders for ten consecutive hours. They provide them with books about Ukraine’s history and culture. And they have a celebrity chef on board. Ievgen Klopotenko won Ukraine’s “MasterChef” television competition in 2015 and—in peacetime—operates a restaurant in Kiev. Now, he’s the personal chef to visiting dignitaries, preparing Ukrainian food for them during their train journeys.
It’s not just the occasional prime minister, either. Over 200 foreign dignitaries have made the trip, including American Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and Angelina Jolie, who does humanitarian visits on behalf of the UN. Klopotenko says he doesn’t get much advance notice—just a text saying that someone important is visiting.
A fast transition
I am in awe of what they are doing. I can’t fathom what it’s like to live in a country under attack from a foreign invader. People call the railway workers Ukraine’s “second army.” And it really seems to be true. The fact that they have this huge national asset, this infrastructure, and in a space of hours, maybe days, they repurposed it to take civilians out of the country, move military equipment to the front lines, now handle exports that used to be on trucks—and the trains still follow a schedule! I am just in awe of what they are doing. Remember this, too: 165 rail employees have been killed in this war.
The railway workers are going to have a special, special place in the Ukrainian history books when this is over.
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