Over 200,000 railway workers are responsible for roughly 20,000 kilometres of railway tracks in Ukraine. Despite the constant danger from Russian attacks, they have kept the network largely operational during the war. Their work has saved countless lives and has been of vital importance for Ukraine’s ability to withstand Putin’s invasion. This is the story of the war in Ukraine, from the perspective of its railway workers
Dutch photographer, Jelle Krings, has documented the crucial role that trains have played in Ukraine’s war effort since the outbreak of the war.
"In the weeks leading up to February the 24th, 2022, Kyiv was plagued by rumours of Russian troops and weapons amassing along Ukraine’s borders. The air was tense with anticipation as many residents made plans to flee the country in case of invasion. Others were sceptical and dismissed concerns, convinced that they were caught up in Russian propaganda designed to pressure Ukraine into submission. As Kyiv braced for impact, I travelled to the capital and stayed at the Ibis Railway Hotel. On Sicheslavska Street, beside the large pillars at the entrance of the central railway station, I breathed in the cold winter air. Surely, I thought, the station would be among the first targets for Russian bombs."
KRYVYI RIH TO CHOP An evacuation train carries a group of orphans and children with special needs from Kryvyi Rih to Chop, near the Polish border. There, Austrian volunteers will meet them and take them to accommodation in Western Europe. (13/3/25)
In the immediate aftermath of the invasion I covered a mass exodus as millions of refugees fled their country. Lviv, in Western Ukraine had become the main transit point for those travelling to Poland. Arriving on evacuation trains, Ukrainians moved through the station in vast numbers: tens of thousands every day. Their gazes were distant, marked by the trauma and shock of what had become their new reality: full-scale war. I soon realised that without those trains, most of the people passing through would have been trapped in towns and villages besieged by Russian troops.
Ukraine stretches1,316 kilometres from east to west and even before the war was one of Europe’s poorest countries. Rail transport is the primary mode of travel. In hindsight, knowing of Russia’s war crimes, these people could have been wounded, captured, raped or killed. Amidst the chaos at Lviv station, I noticed how – after helping their distraught passengers onto the platform – train attendants and drivers climbed aboard their empty trains to head back east. Setting course against the stream of Ukrainians fleeing their homeland they were determined to save more.
KRAMATORSK, UKRAINE: Maksym and Valentyna embrace on the platform in Kramatorsk, seeing each other for the first time in a year. Maksym serves in an artillery unit near Bakhmut. Their two young children, Yeva (5) and Matviy (2), remain with Valentyna in Odesa oblast. Ukraine’s railways have carried soldiers like Maksym to the front, and also allowed families fleeting moments of love and connection (22/6/23)
At Kramatorsk station, empty cargo wagons are parked on the platform to shield passengers from incoming strikes. In April 2022, a Russian cluster munitions attack on the same station killed 63 civilians, including nine children, and wounded more than 100, as they waited for evacuation trains. (23/6/23)
Inspired by the railway workers’ courage, I followed them back east to document their plight. It was not long before I became deeply entrenched in the community. For the next three years I embedded with railway workers and their families in trains, depots, along the tracks, and in their homes. As the war unfolded in front of their eyes, our everyday reality became one of rocket strikes, broken families, hospital visits, and funerals –sometimes all in the same day.
Before the full-scale invasion, railway jobs in Ukraine had seemed unimportant, and railway workers were often taken for granted. But, after February the 24th, those who worked along the rails became essential to Ukraine’s survival. Their relentless effort to keep the trains running despite coming under fire from Russian troops, became a source of national pride. Their courage is now widely seen as illustrative of Ukraine’s resistance to Russian aggression. A story of ordinary people defying an existential threat – to protect their values, freedom and way of life. During years of full-scale war, Ukraine’s railway workers demonstrated indomitable strength, courage and resilience. Their refusal to break enabled their country to withstand an invasion by a stronger, far larger enemy.
CENTRAL UKRAINE: Nurse anesthetist Yuliia (28) walks through the ward of the evacuation train for wounded soldiers, as it transports them from the frontlines to hospitals throughout the country. She tends to Volodymyr (left), who lost both legs near Dachne when he was struck by three drones carrying explosives. Roman (right), lost a leg to a landmine in the Serebryanskyi forest on the eastern frontline. (3/2/25)
Izium - Railway repairmen pause after a day spent fixing tracks destroyed by shelling in Izium. Vitali Yakovenko (second from left), Ivan Gordakov (centre), and Volodymyr Tihonenko (second from right) are part of the crew restoring the railway tracks through the war-torn city, after Ukrainians liberated the region from six months of Russian occupation. (1/11/22)
KYIV, UKRAINE: Depot workers shelter in the bunker beneath Kyiv’s railway depot. Soviet-era tunnels run under depots and stations across Ukraine, now pressed back into service as bomb shelters. The walls remain lined with Cold War posters detailing what to do when the missiles fall. (29/11/22)
KHERSON, UKRAINE: A repair worker in Oleksandr Petrov’s unit washes the blood from his body. The team struck a landmine while trying to rebuild the railway to Kherson a few days after the city was freed. In the same incident, Oleksandr Petrov lost his leg. (13/11/22)
RAIHORODOK, UKRAINE: A key railway bridge in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, connecting Lyman to Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, was destroyed in the first months of the invasion. (25/6/23)
PODILSK, UKRAINE: A railway worker cleans up after a day's work in Podilsk's railway depot. The scorching heat of the depot’s steel workshops exacts its toll. (23/7/23)
SLOVIANSK, UKRAINE: Pasha Cherv, Oleksandr Bara and Mykola Mykolaiovich take a break from fighting on the frontline in the Serebrianskyi forest near Lyman – by a Soviet WW2 monument at a salt lake in Sloviansk. (2/8/23)
BUCHA, UKRAINE: Railway crossing attendant Lyubov Kotsuba (58) was on duty during the early morning of Russia’s invasion on February 24, 2022. She ducked for cover as rockets hit a building across the tracks, the blast shattering every window of her cabin. After Russian forces withdrew from the region, the cabin was repaired, and she returned to her post. (11/3/23)
UKRAINE: A train drives through Ukraine's vast landscape. (11/3/23)
LYMAN, UKRAINE: Through the window of a damaged carriage, the wreck of a train destroyed by shelling is visible in the Lyman depot. Once a key hub in eastern Ukraine, the site was fought over and left in ruins. (10/7/23)
DONBAS, UKRAINE: A changing room for railway station crew was destroyed by an airstrike. (25/6/23)
KONSTANTINIVKA, UKRAINE: Near the frontline, emergency crews recover a maintenance worker who was injured in an accident when a military vehicle veered into his team. (12/7/23)
BORODYANKA, UKRAINE: Halyna Filyk lowers the barrier and readies the crossing for an oncoming train. (11/3/23)
DNIPRO, UKRAINE: Medical staff with Doctors Without Borders treat patients aboard an evacuation train from the frontline city of Pokrovsk to Lviv in western Ukraine. Many were wounded in the violence of the Donbas. Soon after the invasion, Ukrzaliznytsia began converting trains into mobile hospitals, sending them into frontline cities. Equipped with intensive care units, ventilators, and operating theatres, they became lifelines, carrying the injured out of embattled towns and keeping them alive on the way to safety. (24/6/22)
SOUTHEASTERN UKRAINE: An evacuation train evacuated soldiers wounded on the frontlines. The train is packed with soldiers injured by artillery, drones and missile strikes. (3/2/25)
DNIPRO, UKRAINE: Tetiana Vislohuzova, the head of an evacuation train in her train before it departs on an evacuation mission to the frontline. (11/7/25)
BETWEEN LVIV AND POKROVSK: On a mission to evacuate refugees, medics aboard an evacuation train rest en route to Pokrovsk, a frontline city in the Donbas region. (25/6/22)
LYMAN, UKRAINE: On the outskirts of Lyman, a forest burns after shelling. Firefighters refuse to enter, fearing landmines have been left behind. (14/4/24)
DNIPRO, UKRAINE: Firefighters at the scene of a missile strike by the Dnipro railway station. The major Russian missile attack killed three people and injuring 24 people. One railway worker was killed and railway infrastructure at the station was damaged. (14/4/24)
LYMAN, UKRAINE: A destroyed Railway crossing in Lyman (10/7/23)
LYMAN, UKRAINE: In the drone-infested outskirts of Lyman, Liubov scatters sand on the icy steps of the community’s underground shelter to reduce the risk of accidents. (1/3/25)
Lyman, Ukraine. Railway workers living in basements survive on home grown food and humanitarian aid. (14/4/24)
LYMAN, UKRAINE: On a relatively quiet day in terms of shelling, a girl from Evelina’s shelter plays outside. (14/4/24)
SLOVIANSK, UKRAINE: Throughout the country, flower shops have remained open for business, even in the frontline town of Sloviansk. Flowers serve to honour Ukraine’s fallen soldiers and the victims of Russian strikes. They also continue to celebrate life’s milestones, such as weddings, baptisms, and birthdays. (9/7/23)
KYIV, UKRAINE: Nataliia Zhmutska has spent decades mopping floors and dusting halls in Kyiv-Pasazhyrskyi. When Russia invaded, she kept going to work, watching countless refugees stream westward through the station. (10/3/23)
Lviv Ukraine Anhelina and Kosta say their goodbyes through the window of an evacuation train heading to Poland. Anhelina is pregnant with their child, she is fleeing the country while Kosta stays behind. Under a government decree intended to motivate Ukrainians to join the military, Ukrainian men between 18 and 60 are not allowed to leave the country. (11/3/22)
BORODYANKA, UKRAINE: A train thunders past the railway crossing where the Kuhar family lived for decades, until their home was destroyed in the Russian assault on Borodyanka. (11/3/23)
KYIV, UKRAINE: Bullets from anti-aircraft guns fire at Russian attack drones flying through Kyiv’s skies. Throughout the war Kyiv endured relentless waves of missile and drone attacks, its night skies lit up by air-defence fire. The echo of explosions shook the capital’s districts. (20/2/25)
AVDIIVKA, UKRAINE: Combat medics Leonid and Ivan evacuate wounded soldiers Oleksandr and Misha from the frontline near Avdiivka to a stabilisation point. Once stabilised, wounded soldiers are transported to hospitals in safer inland cities, often by train. (14/7/23)
BOROVA, UKRAINE: Borova in the Kharkiv region, workers dig fresh trenches and defensive lines along the railway lines. Tracks are both lifeline and target, and their protection is reinforced with dugouts and fortifications. (16/4/24)
KHARKIV, UKRAINE: A Russian missile strike destroyed the Zmiivska power plant by the railway in Kharkiv, cutting electricity to the overhead lines and leaving hundreds of thousands without power for weeks. (18/4/24)
LYMAN, UKRAINE: A railway family mourns the death of Nina Rosokha who was killed by a Russian artillery strike on their home city, the Donbas railway hub Lyman. She was returning home from the post office as MLRS rockets struck a market place killing her and eight others. Natalia leans over the dead body of her mother during her funeral on the outskirts of the Kreminna forest. Sounds of front-line fighting rage in the distance. Nina had worked in a railway heating service department, her husband worked as a train driver for 36 years. Oleksandr (right-front) worked as an engineer in the Lyman train depot until it was largely destroyed by Russian shelling. (11/7/23)
IZIUM, UKRAINE: When Ukrainian forces liberated Izium in September of 2022, they discovered a mass grave in a forest at the city’s edge. It held more than 440 bodies, many showing signs of torture and execution. (3/8/23)
LYMAN, UKRAINE: A Ukrainian soldier living in a train in Donbas. (25/6/23)
KHARKIV, UKRAINE: Soldiers clean and grease 50-year-old shells before loading them into an even older Soviet C-60 gun dug into the forest soil of Kharkiv’s northern flank. Much of Ukraine’s artillery, and the shells to supply it, move by rail to frontline positions. (23/6/23)
Dnipro, Ukraine. A firefighter pauses after finding a dead body at the site of a missile strike near Dnipro's central railway station.
KHERSON, UKRAINE: Ukrainian soldiers pass through an underground section of a frontline trench in Kherson Oblast. (7/11/22)
LYMAN, UKRAINE: The railway station in Lyman was completely destroyed by Russian airstrikes. Once a key railway hub in Donetsk Oblast, Lyman changed hands several times in the war. (25/6/23)
SOUTHERN UKRAINE: On board a moving military evacuation train, surgeon Oleksii (50), tends to a wounded soldier whose leg was torn apart by shrapnel from Russian shells. The train ensures the soldier gets the care necessary to save his leg on the move. (3/2/25)
KYIV, UKRAINE: A woman mourns at a memorial for fallen soldiers on Kyiv’s Maidan Square. (14/2/25)
KYIV, UKRAINE: Rows of sidelined wagons fill the Kyiv depot. Their steel is recycled for new parts or hauled to frontline stations like Kramatorsk, where empty cars serve as blast protection. (29/11/22)
BAKHMUT, UKRAINE: The central hall of Bakhmut’s railway station, damaged by Russian shelling. (4/11/22)
IZIUM, UKRAINE: A repair crew pauses over shattered rails, glancing skyward as a fighter jet screeches past. (1/11/22)
UKRAINE: A train loaded with armoured vehicles and heavy weapons rumbles forward on an overcast day. Ukraine’s vast rail network has been essential for moving arms and equipment across the front, sustaining the defence against Russia’s invasion. (11/3/23)
KRAMATORSK, UKRAINE: Oksana Replik (31)and Vitaliy Dmytrenko (35) say their goodbyes after a first visit since the start of the war. (23/6/23)