THE OPENING bars of the Cossack March rang out from the platform speakers at Zaporizhzhia-1 train station, jaunty trumpets transitioning into a rousing military march, heralding the departure of train number four, the 17.53 to Uzhhorod.
Carriage attendants slammed shut the heavy metal doors, a few people on the platform waved forlorn goodbyes in the evening gloom, and the train clattered off on its journey across the entire breadth of Ukraine, a 1,400km ride from close to the frontline all the way to the border with the European Union.
In the two years since Vladimir Putin’s invasion, the railways have been Ukraine’s lifeline, connecting cities and carrying millions of people to safety. Train number four has 10 carriages, nine with second-class, four-bed sleeper compartments, and one luxury carriage of two-bed compartments, for the 20-hour journey from the smokestacks of Zaporizhzhia to the cobbled alleys of Uzhhorod.
In the decades since independence in 1991, Ukraine has often been viewed through its divisions, particularly the tensions between the largely Russian-speaking east and the mostly Ukrainian-speaking west. That was always an oversimplification, masking many different and more subtle dividing lines, unsurprising in a country of more than 40 million people, with a turbulent history.
When Putin launched full-scale war two years ago, the east-west divide dissolved further. The Kremlin’s idea that many Ukrainians would welcome Russia turned out to be false, and a new and broad national identity was forged in opposition to Russia’s marauding armies. Even in places such as Zaporizhzhia, a grimy industrial city on the Dnipro River, of broad avenues and bombastic Stalin-era buildings, people put up fierce resistance to the Russians.
But if the big story of the first year of Ukrainian resistance to Putin’s war was one of resilience, inspiration and unity in the face of an existential threat, as the war enters its third
