2023-11-19 19:11:07
A Ukrainian train attendant works with Western dignitaries
In a remote town in Ukraine lives Tetyana Kogut, a 36-year-old woman who has been working as a train stewardess for regarding 19 years. She never knew that she would meet celebrities or heads of state around the world.
Tetiana Kogut checks tickets (AFP)
Today, she has an impressive collection of photos of Western leaders she met during her work on a train transporting dignitaries who came to support the Ukrainians in confronting the Russian invasion.
Kogut appears in photos with British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, and Slovak President Zuzana Caputova. These are just a few of the many photos she browses on her phone.
Tetiana Kogut and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak (AFP)
“I accompanied dozens of passengers: presidents, prime ministers, princes and other important figures,” Kogut told Agence France-Presse.
Tetyana lives with her husband and their teenage son in her village of Golovitskoe, two hours from the big city of Lviv in western Ukraine. Since the beginning of the Russian invasion on February 24, 2022, of the largest country in Europe, commercial aircraft have stopped operating, and only night trains remain to transport Ukrainians within the country and abroad. All of this at relatively cheap prices and punctuality in times of war.
Therefore, Ukraine’s supporters have no choice; they are forced to travel on these trains, often from Poland. One or two stewards serve each trailer, checking tickets and serving tea, coffee and biscuits, while ensuring security and cleanliness. With the beginning of the Russian invasion, Titiana had been working for weeks on civilian evacuation routes, sometimes under bombardment.
Train attendant Tetiana Kogut and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen (AFP)
Dozens of hosts and hostesses were assigned the task of accompanying delegations coming to Ukraine, when Russian forces were forced to retreat in the spring of 2022 following failing to seize Kiev, which coincided with the arrival of Western officials.
Titiana’s first mission was to accompany the President of the European Parliament, Roberta Mizzola, at the beginning of April 2022. At that time, the train crew realized that they would be accompanying a senior person when they saw security guards at the station in Poland.
After a year and a half, Titiana no longer counted the famous people accompanying her. I learned how to approach these passengers in English “to offer tea or coffee” and to “understand the questions” they ask.
In total, Ukrainian trains transported more than 500 official delegations during the 21 months of the war. These trips are organized in complete secrecy for security reasons, but sometimes details leak out later, such as a video clip published on the Politico website in which German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and then Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi appear joking with French President Emmanuel Macron during their travel to Kiev in June ( June) 2022.
Tetiana Kogut and former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson (AP)
The traveler who accompanied Tetiana most often was former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who traveled on the same train 4 times while he was still in office and following he left. He presented her with his hat bearing the London Underground logo.
It was Johnson who comforted Tetiana during her “worst journey” on August 24, 2022, when a Russian raid on a railway crossing killed at least 25 civilians, including two of her colleagues.
Ukrainian train attendant Tetyana Kogut checks passengers’ tickets (AFP)
On the other hand, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock’s team expressed “strong admiration” for the punctuality of the train that arrived in Kiev on time. “They said they don’t have this in Germany,” says Tetiana, where the train is ridiculed because of the relatively poor service it provides.
Finally, Titiana points out that she created a “small museum” for the souvenirs that the passengers gave her, such as badges, written expressions of thanks, pens, notebooks, etc. She says: “I never imagined that I would be able to meet the heads of other countries and talk to them, but I preferred peace and not seeing them except on television.”
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