I’m in the same bomb shelter in Kyiv where I’ve spent many hours, often entire nights, since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.
It’s close to the main railway station, which until now didn’t make it any more dangerous than many other places in the city center, but in recent months Russia has intensified its attacks on passenger trains and rail infrastructure.
Since the 2022 invasion, Russian missiles have attacked 43 railways stations, killed 52 railway workers, and damaged or destroyed 500 locomotives. Most of that destruction has been this year.
It’s common now for trains to stop between cities, with passengers ordered off in a remote village or field until the immediate danger of missiles passes.
It happened twice this morning on my way here from Kharkiv, making a five-hour journey more than seven.
The rail authorities give clear instructions about the procedure for getting on and off the trains - take only essentials, help others if you can, and if there are explosions, lie face down on the ground, cover your head, and keep your mouth open.
Passengers generally take these train evacuations in their stride, not wasting their energy waving fists at the sky, or even tutting much.
The first unscheduled stop today was at the small community of Reshetylivka. Passengers got off the train and gathered in a small nearby park with a World War II monument that lists the 163 locals (“WARRIORS OF THE SOVIET ARMY”) who died in the war, most during the town’s German occupation between September 1941 and September 1943. Intercity trains don’t usually stop at places like this, and the woman working in the tiny station shop was happily overwhelmed by the surprising arrival of hundreds of customers.
After about an hour we were ordered back onto the train, only to stop again a little while later at another small local station in Hoholiv, a former Cossack town. It boasts a large statue of Ukrainian writer Gogol, its grandeur undermined by a large insect perched on his head.
Passengers again tried to make the best of it. A young man stood working on his laptop, a small boy cradled a gray kitten inside his coat, and a woman sat on a bench knitting with hairy yellow wool. Eli, a chirpy American from the Jersey Shore who does voluntary humanitarian work here, said the stops gave him the chance to make his target of 20,000 steps a day.
By the afternoon we arrived in a city getting hammered with round-the-clock bombardments. Kyiv spent an average of 7.5 hours a day under air raid alert in September — nearly five times longer than in July, when alerts lasted just over 90 minutes on average. The alerts were active for 33 hours in one 48-hour period last week. Ukraine’s Economy Ministry estimates that every hour of a missile alert costs the country $45 million.
Tonight the bomb shelter has the now oddly-familiar smell of an underground parking lot. It isn’t freezing cold. About a dozen us will spend the night here, the lucky ones on chairs. But winter is coming and temperatures in the shelter will fall. From November, train passengers will be faced with the prospect of having to stand outside for hours in snowy fields, in the middle of the night, when it’s far below freezing. Spring seems a long way off.
