‘Iron People’ displaying an iron will

GARY ESSEX reports on the courage and dedication shown by Ukraine’s railway workers, as they defy life-threatening conditions to keep the country’s rail network operational

When Russia invaded in February 2022, escalating the conflict that had begun eight years earlier, Ukraine’s airspace was closed to civilian traffic owing to the threat of missile attack. For Ukrainian Railways - Ukrzaliznytsia -that meant an increase in passenger numbers, along with the task of evacuating people from conflict areas. In the first week of the invasion, the UN reported that more than a million refugees had fled Ukraine. That figure had topped eight million by February 2023. Since then, a significant number have returned, especially to the western and southern regions away from the conflict zone, although there are still around eight million displaced people inside Ukraine. The vast majority of these refugees have moved by rail, with 61,000 people evacuated by train from frontline settlements in 2023.…

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RAIL (Digital) - 1 Issue, Issue 1016

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