Tears, smiles and the occasional artillery explosion on Saturday greeted passengers as the first train in eight months pulled into the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson from Kyiv and families divided by war were reunited. “I promised I would come back. It happened so I kept my promise,” said Anastasia Shevlyuga, 30, moments after stepping off the train and meeting her mother. For others, the moment was more sombre. Svytlana Dosenko fought back tears as she waited for her only son who she last saw before Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24. The wait has been excruciating. “He’s the only one I have left,” she cried. The past months have been wracked with grief, humiliation and fear since Russians forces fanned out from the Crimean peninsula and occupied large swathes of Ukraine’s Black Sea coast, including Kherson. Two days after the war began in February, Dosenko’s husband died of Covid after power was cut to the hospital where he was on a respirator. In the months that followed, she lived under Russian occupying forces, who frequently searched apartments and set up checkpoints throughout the city. “It was very messy and very hard.