Last minute program changes are the order of the day, plans need to be constantly updated as Russian attacks hit platforms and stations all the time. For Oleksandr Kamyshin, 37-year-old president of the Ukrainian railway network, avoiding the routine that the Moscow army might intercept makes the difference between life and death. So far, according to his estimate, railway personnel have helped move two and a half million Ukrainian refugees away from the bombing.
But the railways don’t just move people fleeing the war: they deliver tons of aid to areas of the country under attack, transport troops to cities on the front, and continue to export everything Ukraine can produce under these conditions of war.
However, the enormous operation to move humans and goods is having a high cost in terms of human lives: since the beginning of the invasion, 33 railway employees have been killed under artillery fire. Kamyshin himself risks his skin every day: he moves between one station and another surrounded by bodyguards, the Russians would like to eliminate him. “We have to be faster than those who try to find us. Our people risk their lives. They go under the bombings, keep saving people,” he tells the BBC.
Within three weeks, since the Russian attack was launched, the president of the railway network has become one of the most important men in Ukraine. It took him a handful of days to go from organizing the reform of the railway sector to the strategy of war operations. “All the people in Ukraine were businessmen, farmers, professionals before the invasion began – he observes -, now they are all at war. We all started waging war”. And his life jumped into the trenches at any moment, without the time to go home to his wife and two children from last February 24th.
He introduces himself as a man who is planning a long campaign: “Instead of seaports we go west – he explains – we have launched a program to transfer production from east to west. So we can move people, ideas, plans, perhaps machinery to launch a new production in the west “. An ambitious project that could be essential for the country’s economic survival. After all, the railway is the largest employer in Ukraine, with 231,000 employees in 603,470 square kilometers of territory, the second largest in Europe.
Meanwhile Kamyshin, like all Ukrainians, believes that the West must do more than provide weapons and humanitarian aid and would like the NATO military alliance to impose a no-fly zone. “This war will be won by Ukraine in any case. We will continue to repair the tracks once the fire has ceased, we will keep the trains running as long as possible. There is no other option for us”, assures the president of the Ukrainian railway network.
Source: Ansa
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