The night train to Kyiv

“Welcome to Ukraine. We are very happy that you have returned.”

Journalism is too opaque and misunderstood. Chills gives a behind-the-scenes look at how dangerous investigative journalism gets made. 

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JUST ACROSS THE POLISH BORDER IN UKRAINE — The blur is mainly green. It’s golden hour, and we’re riding just fast enough past forests and fields dotted with red poppies to make out skinny trunks and a wash of leaves. On our way from Warsaw to Kyiv, the train is filled with Ukrainians returning home. No one I’ve spoken to feels it is exactly safe to go back, but it is still home, they say.

The people on this train are a congenial bunch. It’s easy to forget what we’re rushing toward in this modernish, Eastern European train, but there are little reminders: The passengers are almost all women and children. Mostly young, some of the women left behind husbands fighting, others, husbands training to fight. There is a dog and a cat in the cabin next door, precious enough to take as their owners fled wanton Russian artillery that may have collapsed a house on their street. Overstuffed suitcases make a maze of the narrow hall beyond our cabins.

Nobody shows their apprehension or nerves, if they have them. Some, though, admit that they are deeply frightened to return. Their experiences so far are varied, just like their responses to a war they never imagined.