Charles Miranda: How I am seeing Ukraine fall apart

To understand the Russian-Ukrainian war you only have to walk along the packed platform in Lviv, says Charles Miranda in Ukraine. WATCH VIDEO.

As another packed train from the east pulls into Lviv central station, you see the all too familiar look in the eyes of the passengers.

It’s despair, it’s misery, it’s fear, it’s an indescribable sense of hopelessness and loss for family, property and livelihood.

To understand the Russian-Ukrainian war you only have to walk along the packed 160m long platform in Lviv in Ukraine’s west and see and hear what this conflict has created.

Ukraine today is something akin to occupied France 1942 where war has arrived and thousands of displaced women, children and the elderly shuffle in one direction brushing past soldiers striding in the other.

People try to get an evacuation train at Kyiv train station. Picture: AFP

The ebb and flow of the tide of human misery is breathtaking but inescapable and is being seen in every town and city in a country that only 30 years ago tasted freedom for the first time when it became an independent nation in Europe, breaking free from the shackles of the Soviet Union.

Now that freedom, like the nation, lies in ruins and people are being forced to flee.

The stories on platform 4 are harrowing, some indescribably painful.

A woman moving with her family suddenly breaks down in tears and strangers physically reach out with a comforting arm, her children don’t seem to notice or have seen it often enough on the five-hour journey from the capital Kyiv to no longer care.

Heartwrenching scenes at Kyiv train station. Picture: AFP

A few metres on and another woman is on her mobile phone and suddenly stops, howls and collapses as the flow bends around her.

Children by her side start to cry in confusion, their dog is barking and another stranger helps to move her on toward a man with an orange witches hat on the end of a broom directing the throng to the buses waiting to take all to Poland.

“Someone they know is either dead or missing or both, it’s the same,” shrugs an English speaker in the throng, feeling the need to explain.

Long lines as people try to escape Ukraine at Kyiv train station. Picture: AFP

They are all women and children or the elderly in the crowd of course, all boys to men 16-60 years have had to remain behind to defend their cities against Russian military marauders.

Then there is a distant thud outside and there is a, I can’t describe it, maybe a short collective yelp like on a roller coaster on the drop, then a police volunteer calls out something and calm is restored. Outside its mayhem and more tears and thousands of stranger hugs. It’s also freezing cold and snowing lightly and while some wait for trains, buses or cars to take them elsewhere many will camp here until transport or a local bed becomes available.

Men staying back in Ukraine farewell their loved ones as a train prepares to leave Kyiv station. Picture: AFP

There have been Russian assaults outside the city but as yet it has not been directly struck.

But it’s a matter of time and air raid sirens wail up to four times a day every time a missile or armed drone launched from afar cruises overhead on its way to a target to the city’s east or north, forcing people to find a public bunker and flee underground. It’s stressful and relentless.

I have covered a lot of war and disaster zones but never have I seen the sort of collective vacant exhausted glaze on so many people who presumably two weeks ago lived joyous middle class lives but now have to accept they are likely to lose loved ones and rely on handouts in a foreign country.

A woman holds a toddler before stepping up in an evacuation train as a man hugs a woman. Picture: AFP

There is anger too on the street and great suspicion. There is evidence Russian spies are circulating, pin dropping on their iPhones locations of nondescript military deports and rally points that have sprung in the past fortnight.

On the road to Kyiv, the harrowing scenes are the same and everyone has a survival story to tell. As they share their stories, everyone regularly glances up not being rude but in safety and anticipation for the Russian artillery that will fall.

Originally published as Charles Miranda: How I am seeing Ukraine fall apart