Poland Is Rebuilding An Abandoned Rail Line To Ukraine To Help Refugees Escape

As war rages on in Ukraine with Russia, Poland is hard at work to rebuild a passage of safety.

A group of men is currently digging by hand, and using pickaxes and rakes to rebuild an abandoned railway line that was created more than a century ago.

The line runs through a remote mountainous province in Kroscienko, that connects Ukraine to Poland.

In doing their part, these Polish workers are travelling three hours to get to the southmost border crossing with Ukraine to attempt to restore a 19th-century train track and form another route of refuge for the Ukrainian people. 

REUTERS/Yara Nardi

The train line runs for 29 kilometres and currently has several crews working to repair the deserted track.

Since Russia began its invasion of Ukraine, more than 2.8 million people have fled the country, according to the United Nations (UN). 

Of those 2.8 million, 1.7 million have looked to Poland to make their escape, with UN Spokeswomen Joung-ah Ghedini-Williams telling the BBC that it is mostly women and children who are making the cross across the border.

The government of Poland said they will need more money than the EU is currently offering in order to host the number of people arriving.

President Andrzej Duda last week said: “Unless we receive international assistance, then given the further influx of refugees to Poland on this scale, this will end up in a refugee disaster.”

REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch

However, the President praised his own citizens and the empathy being shown towards the Ukrainian refugees. 

Duda told BBC’s Sunday Morning programme: ”I am really deeply grateful to my compatriots because what they have show so far, I’m talking about ordinary people, they come to our borders with transport saying ‘I’ll take four people, I will take a whole family to my home.”

This empathy is reflected by the workers outside of who continue to throw themselves and resources into repairing the disused rail line. 

While many have already been welcomed from Ukraine into Poland, the work being done at the Carpathian mountains is a great indication that they expect more to arrive as they hope to aid their route to safety.