Zahraniční

Europe’s Trains Take Fighters to Ukraine, and Bring Back Refugees

Posted 29 dubna, 2022

Článek vyšel v The New York Times

Matina Stevis-Gridneff

Autorkou článku je Matina Stevis-Gridneff

Built up over 150 years of conflicts that defined modern-day Europe, railways have played a central role in the continent’s peacetime integration. Now they’re back on a war footing.

Vitali Slobodianiuk, right, and Volodymyr Kotsyuba, both Ukrainians, on a train from Prague to Przemysl in Poland. They were going back to Ukraine to join the fight against Russia’s invading army.
Vitali Slobodianiuk, right, and Volodymyr Kotsyuba, both Ukrainians, on a train from Prague to Przemysl in Poland. They were going back to Ukraine to join the fight against Russia’s invading army.Credit…Emile Ducke for The New York Times

ABOARD THE PRAGUE-PRZEMYSL TRAIN — On the 12th night of the war, on a platform at Prague’s central train station, Vitali Slobodianiuk and Volodymyr Kotsyuba met for the first time.

They had few things in common: both were Ukrainians working in construction sites in the Czech Republic. On that frigid evening, both got on a train back to Ukraine to join the fight against Russia’s invading army.

Mr. Slobodianiuk, a 47-year-old former soldier, and Mr. Kotsyuba, a 35-year-old university graduate, shared a neat compartment on the sleeper train from Prague to the Polish-Ukrainian border town of Przemysl, sticking together, even though most carriages were virtually empty.

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