Ten years of war, about a hundred trains connect the country from town to town, heading towards the front where you can, and sometimes it is difficult to buy tickets for the regular train “Kyiv — War”.

Kramatorsk is the final eastern station for trains, meetings and meetings (flowers around the station are in great demand). Dozens of women come here every day, and maybe hundreds, no one counts that. Taking into account the number of passengers on a flight, the railway does not take into account the reasons. If the reasons were to be weighed, not the popularity of the routes, they would have to lay tracks east, south and north from each village and town.

About “Kiev - Kramatorsk” they say “Kiev - War”, but they also said about “Kiev - Konstantinovka” while the train went there, so they said about the Bakhmut flight, which stretched along the whole country.

After all, places of emotional meetings are Pokrovsk (stop near the market, nowhere to park, green cars everywhere), and Druzhkivka. Almost ten years ago, my mother went to see my father in Starobilsk, now occupied. In addition, she first saw a rolling field there. Two years ago, my friends and I exchanged contacts of Bakhmut apartments, where you can stay if your husband is released at least for half an evening.

But a train arrives in Kramatorsk: on the second platform between the freight cars, with which they fenced the platform for meetings, so that they in turn protect people from debris. Some will stay here for less than an hour while the drivers pass from one end of the train to the other and rest before heading in the opposite direction.

This photo was taken by photographer Roman Pylypiy: Ukrainian military Mikhail kisses his girlfriend Victoria on the platform of the Kramatorsk station on August 1, 2024. You can see from the side these same freight cars, with which the railwaymen, as if walls, surrounded their date. Mikhail said that Victoria came here to him for the first time. I think not for the last time.

I remember going to my husband for the first time. Not as a journalist, as a woman. My colleague and close friend helped to build a route on different sections of the road - who and where will pick me up. Then she called familiar volunteers to pick me up in Konstantinovka, on the way back.

— Why is she going?

Guys, this is love.

— And not a word more.

Not a word, but maybe a song?

You will notice Mikhail's tattoo: “Earth is not my home”. These words are close to the beginning of the old gospel of the country music star of the 50s Jim Reeves.

This world is not my home

I'm just passing through

This world is not my home

I just drive by.

I'm just passing by, today on the train “Kyiv — Kramatorsk”.

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Material created with support The Free Word Foundation.

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Text by Vira Kuriko

Photo by Roman Pilipey