Once a symbol of wartime despair, Kyiv’s train station is a place of hope

Women and children are returning to Ukraine en masse despite the looming threats, after Russian troops retreated from the country's northern regions in early April.

Roman Chernozemskyi paces up and down the train platform, his face unreadable, lips pursed.

His right hand is stuffed into his jean pocket, his left clutching a bunch of daffodils, sold to him moments before by an elderly woman at a small stall outside. He doesn’t know why he chose daffodils.

Around him, on platform number eight at Kyiv-Pasazhyrskyi train station, a small crowd of men just like him stand expectantly. Many are holding flowers — tulips, daffodils or roses.

Once prevented by presidential decree from leaving Ukraine, Kyiv’s men wait to collect their wives, girlfriends, sisters and children who have returned.  Despite the fighting still raging in the south of the country, families have begun pouring back in to Kyiv and its surrounds, following the retreat of Russian troops more than one month ago.

It’s a vastly different picture than mid-March, when 75,000 people left and just 18,000 were coming the other way.

Several times a day now, when trains from Poland are due to arrive, the train platforms here crowd with men. Children jump off trains into expectant arms. Women sob as they embrace significant others. Men in military uniforms, flowers in one hand, sprint down the platform to find their partner at the other end.

Global News spent a week at the station, documenting dozens of reunions under bittersweet circumstances.

Two months after this station became a symbol of desperation and sadness — a site where families were torn apart — Kyiv’s train station is now where people are being brought back together.