Photo with a story by Vira Kuriko: This is love — and not a word more.

Ten years of war, about a hundred trains connect the country from city to town, heading towards the front line wherever it's still possible, and sometimes it's hard to get a ticket for the "Kyiv-War" train.

Kramatorsk is the final eastern station for trains, meetings, and reunions (flowers around the station are in high demand). Dozens, maybe even hundreds, of women travel here every day, but no one really counts them. While the railway tracks the number of passengers, it doesn't record the reasons for their journeys. If reasons mattered more than the popularity of the routes, tracks would be laid east, south, and north from every village and town.

They say "Kyiv-Kramatorsk" is the "Kyiv-War" train, but they used to say the same about "Kyiv-Kostiantynivka" until that train stopped running, and the same was said about the Bakhmut line that stretched across the country.

In the end, places for emotional reunions also include Pokrovsk (a stop near the market, no place to park, green cars everywhere) and Druzhkivka. Almost ten years ago, my mother would travel to see my father in Starobilsk, now occupied. Along with everything else, she saw tumbleweeds there for the first time. Two years ago, my friends and I were exchanging contacts of apartments in Bakhmut, places to stay the night if our husbands were released, even for half an evening.

But the train arrives in Kramatorsk: on the second platform, surrounded by freight cars, which form a barrier to protect the waiting passengers from shrapnel. Some people stand here for less than an hour, just long enough for the train operators to switch ends and rest before heading back in the opposite direction.

This photo was taken by photographer Roman Pilipey: Ukrainian soldier Mykhailo kisses his girlfriend Viktoria on the platform of Kramatorsk station on August 1, 2024. You can see the same freight cars on the side, surrounding their reunion like walls. Mykhailo said it was Viktoria's first time visiting him here. I don’t think it will be the last.

I remember my first trip to see my husband. Not as a journalist, but as a woman. My colleague and close friend helped me piece together the journey, figuring out who would pick me up at different points along the way. She called some volunteer friends to pick me up in Kostiantynivka on my way back.

— "Why is she going?"
— "Guys, it's love."
— "And not a word more."

Not a word more, but perhaps a song?

You might notice Mykhailo's tattoo: "Earth is not my home." These words are close to the beginning of an old gospel song by 1950s country music star Jim Reeves:

"This world is not my home, I'm just a-passing through..."

I'm just passing through, today on the "Kyiv-Kramatorsk" train.

‍

‍

‍

Text by Vira Kuryko

Photo by Roman Pilipey