The arrival of the first Ukrainian train in Kherson, with its famous blue paint, served as a potent symbol of the city’s liberation after eight months of cruel Russian occupation.
As the train rumbled into the retaken southern city, residents standing along the tracks waved to the passengers. On the station platform, families were reunited with happy hugs and tears.
Some hoisted flags, while others clutched flowers, as they applauded the employees who valiantly maintained rail service along 16,700 miles of track during Ukraine’s counteroffensive against Vladimir Putin.
They represent the citizens’ will to fight the Russian president’s assault on every front. “Our tanks go in first, then our trains,” asserted Oleksandr Kamyshin, the executive in charge of the vast rail network.
His courageous statements highlight the incredible contribution of the “Iron People” of Ukraine, as they are recognized on social media. During the horrors of war, these are the train drivers, engineers, attendants, and managers that work day and night to defend the backbone of their huge nation.
What a contrast to their better-paid counterparts in Britain, who shamelessly disturb national well-being with strikes timed to cause maximum suffering at Christmas.
Nearly 300 train workers have been killed while transporting soldiers, weapons, and supplies to the war lines, assisting others to flee Kremlin atrocities, and quickly repairing drone and missile damage.
What a difference between these unselfish workers and their better-compensated British counterparts, who cynically interrupt national well-being with strikes timed to cause maximum distress at Christmas.
And how bitterly ironic that while Ukraine’s rail workers perform so valiantly in Europe’s fight for democracy against a bloodstained dictatorship, some hard-Left militants leading strikes in Britain promote Putin’s cause – even posing for photographs with pro-Kremlin thugs and wearing symbols of Russia’s aggression.
As his members destroy services with strikes and overtime prohibitions, the union head Mick Lynch compares his members’ battle with management to “two sides in a war” and employs military terminology. Despite the barrage of bombs and recurrent power outages in his country, Mr. Kamyshin maintains that “war is not a justification” for poor service. Ukrainian tanks enter first, then our trains.
And I can attest to his accomplishment after spending 25 weeks reporting on the situation in Ukraine over the past year.
In October, I was in Dnipro, in central Ukraine, when the Russians launched 84 cruise missiles and 24 drones in an attempt to destroy the energy infrastructure of Ukraine. At 9 p.m. on the same day, Mr. Kamyshin reported that just fourteen trains were experiencing delays of more than one hour.
Even on the worst day of disruptions in Ukraine last month, he boasted that thanks to his staff’s tireless efforts, not a single train was canceled and all passengers arrived safely. Dmytro Yaroshenko, who has worked on the railways for 18 years and led the team on the first train back into freed Kherson, normally denies any claims of personal heroism and argues he is simply performing the job he enjoys.
The 36-year-old remembers cramming terrified passengers into his train in the early days of the war, with crew members giving up their own seats and turning out the lights to discourage Russian strikes.
His train once passed by a blazing fuel depot in the town where his wife and two children were residing. We were observing the fire from the windows. It was terrifying,’ he continues.
Despite waves of attacks on electrical substations, fuel depots, stations, and bridges, the 230,000 men and women employed by Ukrzaliznytsia (Ukraine’s rail system) have kept services operating. “We had eight days to organize a hospital train and thirty days to restore an entire bridge, which are not standard timeframes for railroads,” stated one official.
Unbelievably, 85 percent of trains run on time, which is substantially better than the 68 percent of British trains that arrive on time, according to the most recent statistics.
The efforts of employees have been rewarded with two wage raises, bringing a train driver’s annual compensation to about £7,000 – around eight times less than British workers, who are going on strike over an offered 8% salary hike.
The typical income for British rail workers is £44,000, which is around nine times that of the engineers feverishly repairing Ukraine’s network in subzero temperatures.
The greatest strike on Ukraine’s train system occurred in April, when a missile struck Kramatorsk station as hundreds of people fled Russia’s advance. Sixty lives were lost.
The rocket was launched from the nearby rebel region of Donetsk, which pro-Russian agents captured in 2014. I was told that horrified individuals, including children, had to walk over human flesh in order to escape.
Yet consider this terrifying fact: one of the most senior RMT union leaders visited the enclave shortly after Russia assisted in its secession from Ukraine to hang out with a prominent paramilitary leader.
In 2015, Eddie Dempsey, the senior assistant general secretary of the RMT, who boasts of his ambition to “overthrow capitalism,” posed for photographs with Aleksey Mozgovny. A few weeks after the flamboyant rebel’s death, he penned a glowing obituary.
We have eight days to construct a hospital train and thirty days to construct a bridge.
Nonetheless, Mozgovny was a close buddy of a prominent Russian operator named Igor Girkin, an ultranationalist who helped arrange the events in Donetsk and the illegal invasion of Crimea in the same year. A Dutch court condemned Girkin to life in jail this month for shooting down a passenger jet flying over Ukraine. The fatality count was 298.
However, Lynch has defended his coworker. And Dempsey is the most egregious example of how some high RMT officials, including Communist president Alex Gordon, appear to regurgitate Putin’s rhetoric behind their PR mask.
These folks assert that the Ukraine is infested with fascists and blame NATO for inciting Putin’s atrocities.
I observed the black-and-orange Ribbon of St. George on Putin’s militia during Russia’s annexation of Crimea. Significantly, Gordon protested outside the Ukrainian embassy in London while wearing the ribbon.
Sadly, they are not the only prominent union leaders whose anti-Americanism or Marxism leads them to undertake the dirty work for Putin, a fascist dictator waging a colonial war.
This does not refute their pay argument. Yet, the repugnant attitudes of some union leaders who are ruining Christmas contrast uncomfortably with the heroic efforts of Ukrainians who everyday risk their lives to keep trains running, their nation alive, and democracy on track.
»War is no justification for substandard service… the brave words of Ukraine’s train leader«