As Thousands Shelter in Stations, Kyiv’s Metro Is Still Running Trains
About 15,000 people are living in the Ukrainian capital’s Soviet-era subway system to escape Russian shelling.
A woman holds her child inside a subway car in an underground metro station used as a bomb shelter in Kyiv on March 13.
Photographer: Genya Savilov/AFP via Getty Images
In more peaceful times, more than 1 million people a day rode the trains of the Kyiv Metro. The three-line network, which was the third-largest subway system in the former Soviet Union, boasts underground stations decorated with marble friezes, mosaics, chandeliers and vaulted ceilings.
Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began on Feb. 24, those stations have also served as emergency shelters for an estimated 15,000 Kyiv residents, who bed down on platforms and in hallways after service ends to give people refuge once the city’s curfew begins at 7 p.m.