aboard the train of evacuees from Donbass which takes civilians out of the hell of the bombs every day

“We come from Toretsk, it was tense.” On the station platform of Pokrovsk, a city located in the Donbass (Ukraine), an ambulance parks near one of the seven train carriages. “There was artillery fire all over the place.describes Ignatius, an Anglo-Russian, in an excited tone, on adrenaline. We went to get a woman in a wheelchair. She hasn’t been out of her house for two and a half years. She lived under the threat of bombardment.”

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Together with another young volunteer, they support Nina, a 67-year-old woman, as best they can. She shows her knees, eaten away by osteoarthritis, screaming. The transfer to the medical train is complicated.

Twenty minutes later, the train leaves on time. Nina, her son Andrii and their three cats leave the Donbass. They travel alone in a compartment, their life now fits in four bags. “We didn’t want to leave.she confides, her voice weary, and then fighter planes and helicopters arrived… That’s what decided me. I was in my bed, I couldn’t move and I was waiting for an explosion to hit my apartment. I didn’t want to be buried alive, so that no one could rescue me, suffer and then slowly die under the ruins.”

“I’m not afraid of death, what I feared was dying under the rubble and not being killed instantly.”

Nina, 67-year-old Ukrainian

at franceinfo

Does Nina feel out of the woods? “Nopeshe answers, at least not until we arrived. There are regular bombings on the trains and it is not certain that we will arrive safe and sound.” Nina lost her 5-year-old grand-nephew during the Kramatorsk train station attack. “Who isn’t afraid?she asks. And you, aren’t you afraid?

The missile attack on Kramatorsk station, which killed 57 people and injured hundreds on April 8, is on everyone’s mind. These families were leaving the Donbass. “It can happen again anytime.reacts this man, convinced. The enemy is hitting our infrastructure, but we are rebuilding and continuing.”

So in the train of evacuees, we anticipate the worst. “That’s a tourniquet to stop bleeding”, explains Oleksandr, one of the two doctors on board. He comes from Bakhmout, an industrial city in Donbass, about sixty kilometers from the front. “We are trained in first aid according to international protocolshe says. For example, if there is a bombardment while the train is moving forward, we throw ourselves to the ground. And if the train stops, we take advantage of a lull, we get out, we take shelter in a hole or behind an embankment, we protect our heads and we open our mouths. I think we are ready.”

“I’m scared of course, but it’s my job and if I give up, no one can replace me. I’m doing what I can, it’s my duty.”

Oleksandr, doctor

at franceinfo

Svetlana was station manager at Popasna, now under Russian occupation. For several weeks she recorded the sound of shelling, her apartment was destroyed by a shell. So, like the evacuees she now transports, she left. “Everyone has their missionshe said in an almost caustic tone. Me, it’s my life… What would I do if I had no more passengers? It’s like that. I only know how to do that: before we helped people to go to the sea to go to rest. Now we help them get to safety. Me, I’m like all these people, I’m more afraid of giving up everything rather than the bombardments. We are so attached to our home, to our house, that for me the most difficult thing is to leave.”

Finally, it is 7:40 p.m. when the train arrives at Dnipro station. It is the terminus for half of the travellers. Like Svetlana, a few weeks ago and now Nina, the displaced people of Donbass receive immediate aid of a little less than a hundred euros, a payment which will then be monthly, as long as it takes.