Alexander Kamyshin heads the Ukrainian railway company and has organized the travels of 300 diplomatic delegations
In August 2021, consultant and entrepreneur Alexander Kamyshin was appointed CEO of the Ukrainian railway company Ukrzaliznytsia, to transform the country’s largest company and bring it into the modern age. Not easy when you consider that 90% of the 1,500 trains it operates date from the Soviet era, a time that was also reflected in the tough attitude of the more than 230,000 employees and in more than one corruption scandal.
Kamyshin thus inherited a company that he unscrupulously describes as ‘shit’. But he couldn’t know that this would be the least of his problems. Because when he was only half a year in office, Russia invaded Ukraine. At that time, the dense network of railways, stretching more than 24,000 kilometers, became the lifeline of Ukraine. Millions of refugees have fled in its old convoys, thousands of soldiers have been moved to the front lines in operations it cannot comment on, and the supplies and exports that stave off the collapse of the country’s battered economy are being shipped.
In addition, Kamyshin is also responsible for the “iron diplomacy” program, which manages the transportation of the 300 top-level diplomatic delegations that traveled to Ukraine by rail, under closed airspace, in the first year of the invasion. Including the two who accompanied the Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, to Kiev. Or that of his American counterpart, Joe Biden, for whom a train was informally renamed Rail Force One.
“We have had to align security protocols with those of all countries, even Guatemala. Biden’s was a bit more complicated, but we already have enough experience to successfully execute this transfer. In fact, the US Secret Service would never have entrusted us with such an operation if they did not have complete confidence in our capabilities,” Kamyshin says proudly in a VIP area at Kiev train station.
In one of the few interviews he gives, Kamyshin says preparations for Biden’s trip took weeks. Despite the size of the operation, we performed it in secret and without any leakage. In addition, we have not had a single leak in all the delegations we have transported. With one exception: when President Zelensky made the first leg of his trip to the United States by train. A video was published of him going from a train to a car, but it happened in Poland,” he reveals.
In any case, the head of Ukrainian trains emphasizes that all his operations work like Swiss clockwork. That’s why Kamyshin publicly apologized after Biden’s trip caused delays on other routes.
A look at the huge screen in the station, which shows the departure times of the trains, is enough to see that the vast majority is green. Even those going to cities as hard hit as Kherson or Pokrovsk, on the Donbas front, leave and arrive when the schedule is marked. “The Russians are bombing every day. But from day one we learned to repair the infrastructure quickly and they never stopped us. We didn’t cancel a single long-distance train,” explains Kamyshin, who is permanently on earphones with his team. remains connected.
That success has not come cheap. “353 employees died and 788 were injured in this year of war,” he says seriously. There have also been fatalities among passengers, for example during the shelling of Kramatorsk station. And that is what Kamyshin fears most, because there is no way to protect the buildings from artillery fire. Of course, they use different methods, which cannot be explained for safety reasons, so that the trains are not hit or take as little damage as possible. “I’ve personally gone everywhere to show that I don’t send employees I wouldn’t travel to,” he says.
Despite the difficult situation, which derailed the original modernization plans, Kamyshin continues to work on improving the railway infrastructure: “In the past year we have added 90 new trains to the fleet, the only thing that distinguishes them from their age are the European countries. It’s the highest number in history. And we’re continuing with construction plans, because survival isn’t enough. Little has been invested in infrastructure, and war or no war, we have to grow and improve.”
The manager also adds new routes and services to the European Union. “We need more cooperation from Polish railways to increase frequencies and destinations,” he adds in a more critical tone, underlining the need to increase capacity in the transportation of goods and passengers to Poland, Romania and Moldova. «Cargo is the lifeblood of the economy, because Ukraine is a purely exporting country. And now it’s doubly important, even though trading volume has dropped 50% since the invasion. Yet we bring grain to Spain, iron to Poland, and so on. And now we are growing and helping SMEs to reinvent their logistics chains,” he analyses.
Realizing all these plans during an invasion is not easy. And you can see that Kamyshin is leading the company with a steady hand. “You can’t run a business of this size by being gentle and kind. But people see that we are regaining the respect of the people. Before the war, workers had no prestige. Now people are shaking our hands and thanking us,” says Kamyshin, who receives his orders directly from President Volodymir Zelensky. “The first thing he said to me was ‘go make it work’,” he recalls. he succeeded.
Source: La Verdad
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