The Sunday Read: ‘Ukraine’s 15,000-Mile Lifeline’

The Daily

The New York Times

News, Daily News

4.5 • 97.8K Ratings

🗓️ 11 December 2022

⏱️ 62 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Shortly after the war in Ukraine began, terrified civilians from across the country made their way to their cities’ main train stations. The stations became scenes of great panic, with people jostling to be admitted onto the crowded trains. Compartments were filled 10 times their intended capacity, and people were packed shoulder to shoulder, unable to sit down. Images from these moments captured the beginning of the largest refugee crisis in Europe since World War II. In this extensively reported article, Sarah A. Topol explores the history and cultural significance of Ukraine’s railways, and their crucial importance within the war effort.

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0:00.0	My name is Sarah Topol and I'm a contributing writer at the New York Times magazine.
0:09.0	On February 24th, the day Russia invaded Ukraine, I landed in Miami.
0:17.5	I had just filed a long story about Belarus and I was about to be on vacation with my family.
0:24.5	But then, the invasion started and we ended up watching TV kind of endlessly together
0:32.1	on the couch, unable to move because it was just so shocking.
0:39.0	Give the city where my mom grew up, Harcoup, the city where my uncle went to college,
0:46.9	a rocket just landed in front of his old university.
0:52.1	The sky opened up that day and war came out of it.
0:58.0	As we were watching the news, I was seeing these scenes of people at train stations and
1:03.4	just the inhumanity of trying to survive a war.
1:08.0	How almost degrading it is to shove your way onto a tin can that's going to somehow ferry
1:16.0	you to safety.
1:18.8	I started thinking about the railways and the role that they play in Ukraine.
1:24.4	My own grandmother was snuck onto a train, Kiev, before the Nazis came and everyone else
1:31.1	in my family who stayed there was killed.
1:35.4	And so this railway, it's the reason I'm alive.
1:40.3	It's also integral to what Ukraine is as a country, as it now exists.
1:46.9	I called my editor for Miami and said, I have to go there, I can't just sit here.
1:54.6	So the Sunday read that you're about to hear is the culmination of five weeks of reporting
2:00.8	in Ukraine on its railway system.
2:04.5	How it embodies Ukraine's history and so many of the things that make the country frustrating,
2:11.6	corruption, political infighting, cronism, sexism, and inability to modernize.
	...

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