Thousands of people have fled the Donetsk and Luhansk regions since the beginning of the war in Ukraine. In recent days, the evacuation trains provided by the Ukrainian railways have seen an influx of people who did not want to leave the country and finally came to terms with it. Report on board the train of displaced persons from Donbass.
This Wednesday morning, Doctor Oleksander Babitch and other doctors from Ukrzaliznytsia, the national railway company, meet on the platform of the railway station in Dnipro, a large industrial city in eastern Ukraine and the gateway to the entrance to Donbass. This is the start of a new operation to evacuate civilians trapped in the combat zones that continue to intensify.
Direction Pokrovsk in Donetsk region. After the bombing of the Kramatorsk train station on April 8, which killed 52 people, including five children, the small town of 60,000 became the train exit for Donbass residents.
Railways at the forefront
Bent over their phones, drivers, captains and doctors learned that Pokrovsk had been hit by two rockets a few hours earlier. Six people are said to have been injured. The train departs, crosses the Dnieper River and begins its 200-kilometer journey east.
Doctor Oleksander Babitch, 59, an employee of the national railway company, is coordinating a new operation to evacuate civilians from Donbass. © David Gormezano, France 24
“Of course we’re scared, but someone has to do this job,” explains Dr. Oleksander Babitch. “We know that the Russians are targeting railway infrastructure, 160 company employees have been killed since February. But we keep working, we won’t stop. They bombed the Kramatorsk train station because we gathered the people to be evacuated there.” . After this bombardment we transferred our activities to Pokrovsk. You are inhuman. They don’t respect the rules of war,” he adds, alternating Russian and Ukrainian.
Donbass, at war since 2014
Oleksander Babitch, a doctor from this region, has spent his entire career with the Ukrainian Railways. After long working in the company’s hospitals in eastern Ukraine, he was transferred to the Kyiv region in 2014 when the Donbass war broke out. His parents still live in Bakhmout, between Donetsk and Kramatorsk, just a few kilometers from the fighting. Smiling, energetic, determined, he knows perfectly well the dramas of the inhabitants of this region.
“Those who chose to leave left a long time ago. Those who are leaving now are the ones who didn’t want to leave but were struck by tragedy. A few days ago we evacuated an elderly couple whose house was destroyed by a bomb attack. She had time to escape to a shelter, but not her daughter, who was killed. They buried her in the garden, then left Volnovakha.
Oleksander Babitch hands out first aid reminders to railway workers before arriving at Pokrovsk railway station. © David Gormezano, France 24
Three hours after leaving Dnipro, the train stops at Pokrovsk station. The people who were brought to the train station by coaches and ambulances had to be treated quickly, checked for their health and needs and put on the train – all within two hours. The railway team thought they would collect 200 displaced people today, but in the end only 101 got on. “It’s probably the intensity of the fighting that has prevented the movement of civilians and volunteers looking for them across the region,” we are told.
“The further we get forward, the more difficult the situation becomes. There are many places we can’t get to anymore,” says Oleksander, one of the young volunteers in the orange T-shirt. “We tell people, ‘We’re not sure we can come back, make your choice.’ But some don’t want to leave, even if they live hidden in basements with children. I don’t know how to convince them.” Oleksander tries to understand her reasons: “They must be afraid of losing everything they have. Or they don’t know where to go. ‘We will rob them or cheat them… That’s my interpretation.’
Oleksander, one of the volunteers crossing the Donbass combat zones to bring the civilians evacuated by train to the train station. © David Gormezano, France 24
Arriving from Donetsk, a village between Sloviansk and Lyman, Lyudmila is finally placed in a compartment with her mother, very old and disabled. “We didn’t want to leave our house because my mother had a hospital room. And then nobody wants to leave their house,” she said, close to tears. “But a cluster bomb blew out all our windows two days ago. We lived in the hallways and in the basement. It was too hard, unbearable, we had no more information. And we were out of gas, just the occasional electricity and not much to eat.”
Lyudmila and her mother on the train to Dnipro. © David Gormezano, France 24
A few seats away, a young woman is unpacking a picnic accompanied by her mother and children. This family was fortunate not to be caught up in the fierce fighting that was taking place a hundred kilometers away. A refugee in Poland since the beginning of the war, Lina returned to persuade her mother to leave Donbass. They will make the journey to Lviv, the terminus of this train, and then hope to return to Poland. “We want to come back when it’s over,” Valentina, the mother who lost her husband in the fighting in Donbass after 2014, sighs sadly. “It’s nice to be a guest, but it’s even better to be at home.”
Lina, Valentina and their children want to reach the Polish border. © David Gormezano, France 24
In another compartment, two women face each other, stare into space, a suitcase at their feet. Victoria is a teacher in Pokrovsk and intends to stop in Dnipro. “After that, I don’t remember,” she tells us. “If I could stay, I would because I’ve lived here all my life. But the best way for me to help the Ukrainian army is to leave so they can liberate us. That’s what the local authorities tell us everyone Day.”
Ms. Tsivilina left the city of Artemivsk, she tells us. You have to understand “Bachmout” because the city changed its name in 2015 after a law on “decommunization” was passed in Ukraine. With a population of 77,000, the city has regained its original name. “I’ve been waiting, but now there’s no light in the windows at night. People only go out to buy food. When I think about my apartment, I cry,” says the old lady.
Victoria and Mrs. Tsivilina exchange a few words and discuss the war aboard the evacuation train. © David Gormezano, France 24
After our questions, the two women start a short conversation. “I watched the May 9 parade on TV to understand why Russia is doing this to us. There must be a reason, but I don’t understand what it is. We have to respect our freedom, we didn’t invite them,” the teacher recalls. “There’s no valid reason to invade Ukraine. We can live as we want. They don’t have to save us from ourselves.” , replies Ms Tsivilina, who will join relatives in Kryvyi Rih, the birthplace of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
A century of war in Donbass
There is silence, then the old lady continues in a low voice, “I will come back when the war is over, but I am 83 years old… This region has suffered from the Holodomor for so long [une famine orchestrée par Staline qui fit au moins 2,5 millions de morts en Ukraine dans les années 1930, NDLR]then the holocaust [plus de 1 million de juifs ukrainiens périrent entre 1941 et 1944, NDLR]. And today it’s terrible what they’re doing [les Russes] Theme Mariupol. Putin is Hitler.”
Since 2014, fighting between pro-Russian separatists, actively backed by Moscow, and the Ukrainian army in the east has claimed more than 13,000 lives and displaced nearly 1.5 million people, according to the UN. Since the Russian offensive began in February, fighting has reached unprecedented levels of violence. Moscow wants at all costs to conquer the entire Donbass and defeat the Ukrainian army, which has been opposing it for eight years. A goal that Oleksander Babitch, the doctor from this region, firmly rejects: “If necessary, we will resist to the last drop of blood. We will prevent them from destroying us.”
At the end of a new evacuation operation, the train with 101 civilians on board is approaching the city of Dnipro. © David Gormezano, France 24