TRANS-UKRAINE
1,683 km. 43 stations. 32 hours 35 minutes.
The longest railway route in Ukraine, from the Slovak border to the edge of the eastern front.
VIEW THE DOCUMENTARYTrans-Ukraine is an interactive documentary following the longest railway route in the country. The team boarded the overnight service at Uzhhorod and rode it to its terminus at Lysychansk in the Luhansk Oblast - 43 stops, 32 hours, a country from border to borderline.
The train is not a metaphor here. It is the format. A state institution employing 272,000 people, moving 440 million passengers a year, connecting regions most Western coverage flattens into a single conflict narrative. This documentary holds the full length of it - from Habsburg-era Transcarpathia to Soviet Kyiv to the eastern edge.
FROM THE TRAIN
"UKRAINE IS LIKE A GREAT DEPRESSION."— CONDUCTOR, TRANS-UKRAINE, 2019
THE EASTERN EDGE
The eastern stations documented here became front-line names. At the time of filming, Lysychansk was a functioning city, a railway terminus, an ordinary endpoint. Published five years before the full-scale invasion, Trans-Ukraine now functions as a pre-war archive.
The drone footage over Sumy, Kharkiv, and Lysychansk was shot in 2019. These are the same streets.
WATCH THE STORY
PIOTR ANDRUSIECZKO
MARCIN SUDER
JAKUB GÓRNICKI
THE FULL JOURNEY
1,683 km. 43 stations. 32 hours 35 minutes. The interactive documentary is published on Outriders.