Ukraine war: Elderly and ill forced to sleep in train carriages underground as bombs drop
- The Kyiv metro, with some of the deepest stations in the world, has been a lifesaver for thousands during the war, despite the uncomfortable conditions
- One woman, hard of hearing, speaks unintelligibly and cannot stop crying when asked about how many days and nights she has spent in the cold, damp subway dungeon
It is not clear what makes Valentyna Katkova cry more: illness and old age, or the fact that she now lives in a Kyiv underground train carriage, fleeing Russian bombing.
The 77-year-old is one of some 200 Kyivans who have found shelter in a metro station in the northwest of the city as Moscow’s forces slowly try to encircle the city.
Some of them are elderly people, who prefer the artificial leather seats of the underground carriage to sleeping on mattresses or in tents on the granite floor of the Syrets station.
Dressed in a lilac coat and a knitted hat, Katkova appears in the sliding doors of a blue carriage with a yellow stripe – Ukraine’s national colours.
She is hard of hearing, speaks unintelligibly and cannot stop crying when asked about how many days and nights she spent in the cold and damp underground dungeon. “Since February 24,” the woman says, the date when Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine.
Her daughter, son-in-law, son and granddaughter have spent their nights on the 100-metre platform of the station for the past three weeks.
