National Post (National Edition)
On the train to Ukraine
A STREAM OF WAR REFUGEES RETURN HOME
In the early morning at Przemy l train station, roughly 15 kilometres west of Ukraine's border in Poland, dozens of Ukrainians with their hands full of luggage wait patiently in the light rain for border officials to process their passport.
Their destination: back home to war-torn Ukraine.
From the gate, they watch dozens of their compatriots get off a train that departed from Kyiv the day before. Many people are still fleeing Ukraine daily as Russia's invasion continues, but more and more are returning to their homeland, too.
“When I learned that my son enlisted in the army, I was in Germany,” says Olga, a woman in her 50s cradling her pug. “I immediately wanted to come back.”
Things were upside down at the station the previous night after Russia bombed five train stations in western and central Ukraine as it targeted arms supply routes. The previous train arrived very late and many people like Olga were denied access because they did not buy a ticket.
She shows the National Post a picture of her son, a 28-year-old doctor with a short haircut and big arms covered with tattoos. She hopes to see him after his training and before he is sent to the front. He told her it would not be possible, but she is going back anyway.
Trains to Ukraine are now packed with women, children and elderly men, tired of being away from home. Some 30,000 Ukrainians are returning every day, said the UN in mid-April, and they keep coming.
As the fighting in Ukraine shifts to the eastern and southern regions of the country, an increasing number of displaced people are emboldened to return home every day, volunteers told the National Post at the Przemy l train station.
There are still attacks, though Russia would have to do more to prevent them from coming back.
“It is safer now,” insists Anastasia, a young woman in her twenties with her 18-month-old daughter sitting on her lap. Her friend sitting next to her nods vigorously.
Anastasia was travelling with her mother from Warsaw, Poland, where they sought refuge for two months. They were going back to Khmelnytskyï, a western town located between Lviv and Kyiv. Anastasia could not bear to stay away from her husband any longer.
“I prefer to be with him rather than be alone in another country,” she explained while keeping an eye on her daughter, a joyful toddler, as she played between train seats. She even considered fleeing to Canada.
As convinced as she is that the danger has mostly faded, she admits that she still does not feel safe. “Russian attacks are very random,” she said. “I am scared, very scared,” she added, referring to the recent Russian strikes on railways.
“But what can we do,” she finished with a sigh.
Her husband, previously a dance studio owner, stayed behind in Khmelnytskyï and is still trying to find a job so they can build their life back.
The train from Przemy l arrived 10 minutes late to Lviv, a city 70 km from Poland and considered a safe haven, and almost everybody got out. On the platform, a man handed white flowers to a woman and they both kissed for a long time. The train then continued smoothly to Kyiv.
Olga, who is from Sievierodonetsk, debarked a few stations later. Her hometown is in Louhansk in eastern Ukraine where fighting between Ukrainians and Russians is intense, meaning there is no way she can return home yet. Russia intensified the shelling in the last weeks and the building where she used to live is in very bad shape.
She does not know if she will ever be able to go back. She looked anxious at the possibility of her son being deployed there.
“May I ask you something, do you believe in God?” she asked a National Post correspondent.
“Can you pray for my son, please?"