Paul Workman: Following Crimea bridge blast, Ukrainians return home

KYIV, Ukraine -

It is 9 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 8 and we are sitting in a train just inside Ukraine. A very slow, stop-and-start train from Poland. We’re in a sleeper coach, car 29, in seats 82 through 85. It’s comfortable, except for the long wait as Ukrainian border guards confirm passenger details. We surrender our passports to a young woman in military dress, with lips glossed in red. She smiles as she adds mine to a stack of at least 50 passports cradled in her left hand.

She’s followed by two more border guards who look in our compartment and ask about the contents of our bags. One of them has braces on his teeth. He’s young. He points to a large suitcase on the floor. “Clothes?” I didn’t tell him it also contained body armour, a helmet, a first aid trauma kit, and potassium iodide pills to protect against radiation poisoning. “Yes, clothes.”

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He says something in Ukrainian that included the word “drugs.” My colleague Marc D’Amours and I laughed nervously in quick denial. “No drugs. Just vodka.” And indeed a bottle of Polish Zubrowka, the kind that contains a piece of bison grass floating inside, had softened the frustration of waiting.

The train is full of Ukrainians going home, loaded down with heavy suitcases, struggling to lug them along the narrow passage to their compartments. There are mostly women and children, as men are banned from leaving the country and many are probably on the frontlines.

It is so different now, so much calmer than just a few months ago when roads, trains and buses were jammed with millions of people leaving, desperate to save their lives. Fretfully looking back to witness their towns, villages and neighbourhoods under Russian bombardment.

Their relaxed faces on this Saturday night exposed both a sense of confidence and an absence of the fear that marked their original flight to safety. It now feels normal going home; the trepidation has disappeared.

We should arrive in Kyiv around 10 a.m. – should, as in, hope to. As I write, the train has started moving again. It is not one of those fast, needle-nosed European trains. This one rumbles, bumps and bounces along, but it feels safe and reliable.

The middle-aged conductor in car 29 has a small room at the end of the coach. When I pass by, she’s sharing dinner out of a plastic container with a colleague. It looks cosy.

She speaks with authority and few smiles, utterly serious about her job. Perhaps that’s something that has changed with the war. The trains have been a lifeline for the country, as they moved masses of frightened families out of the path of advancing Russian forces. We noticed that the windows on the cars are now covered in plastic, see-through tape—protection against shattering in the event of an attack. It wasn’t like that the last time we took a Ukrainian train.

This has been quite a momentous day. The last time we travelled this route, early in the war, we saw Ukrainian fuel tanks on fire in the distance, hit by Russian missiles. Today, Ukrainians are agog with the news that a vital bridge linking Russia to the Crimean Peninsula has been attacked and seriously damaged. People are riveted to their phones trying to find out how, with what, and who carried out this audacious act of sabotage on one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s prized accomplishments. This was the bridge he built to glorify his illegal annexation of Crimea.

It feels like the war is turning. One tweet asks what movie Putin is watching tonight: A Bridge Too Far? Ukrainians are scathing in their comments.

The train stops again, at Lviv. It’s about 11:30 p.m. We will be here for another two hours. I know the city well now, it’s where I arrived on Feb. 21, three days before Russia launched its invasion, and Ukraine seemed doomed. It doesn’t feel doomed anymore.

Ukraine’s armed forces have “de-occupied” vast areas of land in the northeast and in the south, around Kherson. Places we had never heard of before, but have now become familiar battlegrounds, just as the towns and villages of Normandy did in 1944. Europe is again at war.

People are daring to use the word “collapse” to describe the fitful performance of the great Russian army—unable to hold territory it brutally seized, looted and destroyed just months ago. Soldiers are deserting. Young men are refusing to fight. Putin is rabidly mocked on Ukrainian social media.

Car 29 has gone quiet. People have made up their beds and shut their compartment doors. The train will soon start rocking and knocking again on its way to Kyiv. Sleep will be a struggle and a gift, if it comes.

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Woke early, slept little. A night of banging, bouncing and bumping in the dark, crawling slowly eastward. There was no rhythm to our movement, rather a jerking, jarring tenuous progress.

The sun is glaring through the window, offering a sense of time. It’s just after 7 a.m. I sway to the toilet with a toothbrush and a bottle of water. The conductor is at her table, dressed in the same clothes, writing something in a notebook. She looks up but doesn’t answer my “Hello.”

It is a tribute to the crew that we arrive on time. As passengers begin shuffling to leave, a young man with a bouquet of flowers moves quickly down the passage and into the next compartment, where a young woman is gathering her things.

They are still locked in a deep embrace as I pass by a couple of times with bags. I wonder how long they’ve been separated. Is he now a soldier? I want to ask, but can’t bring myself to disturb such an intimate moment. The war has already disrupted enough Ukrainian lives.