Incredible picture of thousands of Ukrainians crammed on train platform to escape country

Ukrainians have been fleeing their homes by railway and bus

Thousands of Ukrainians crammed onto a train station platform, some squashed between carriages and the ticket hall, others spilling out onto the tracks: that is the bleak reality in parts of the country with millions forced to flee as the Russian bombs and street fighting grow nearer.

With the number of refugees fleeing Ukraine to neighbouring countries surging past 2 million in less than a fortnight, the United Nations has warned of one of the fastest exoduses in modern times.

And many have used Ukraine’s railways to escape.

The image above, shared widely on social media, points to the scale of the evacuation, as fighting intensifies in the east and south of the country.

In Kharkiv, where the image was taken, large crowds of people were shown waiting for a train to depart over the weekend.

The besieged city, Ukraine's second-largest, has seen heavy fighting with Russian forces having tried without success to seize it since the invasion began.

People wait for an evacuation train at a railway station in Kharkiv on 3 March (EPA)

Ukrainians have also been fleeing their homes by bus.

Coaches left Sumy for Poltava, further west, on Tuesday only hours after a Russian air strike which regional officials said had hit a residential area and killed 21 people.

In Mariupol, hundreds of thousands of people have been sheltering under bombardment without water or power for more than a week.

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy claimed a child had died of dehydration in Mariupol because water was cut off.

Russian troops entered Ukraine on 24 February prompting the country’s president to declare martial law (EPA)

The United Nations human rights office said it had verified 1,335 civilian casualties in Ukraine, including 474 killed and 861 injured, since the invasion started on 24 February. But the true toll was likely to be higher, it said.

Russians have also been packing trains in the hope of fleeing their own country, which has seen economic sanctions imposed by much of the rest of the world, alongside a government crackdown.

Hundreds of Russian passengers are filling up trains to Finland's capital Helsinki from Saint Petersburg since mutual airspace closures cut off flight connections with the European Union.

The two trains on that route were almost empty before Russia's invasion but are now fully booked with 700 people arriving from Russia daily, Finland's public railway operator VR said.

Hundreds more are driving to join lengthy queues at Finnish, Estonian or Latvian road border crossings as many Russians, fearing a wider Russia-West conflict over Ukraine, seek ways to leave the country.