The whispering train The last link between Kiev and Moscow.

“Suddenly, we are the enemy,” Irina whispers to me from the bottom bunk as our Moscow-bound train pulls into Russian border control at around 3am. A year after war broke out in the Donbass, the Kiev-Moscow train is one of the few remaining passenger rail lines linking Russia and Ukraine.

“We never had any problems before,” says Irina, a sturdy Ukrainian woman in my carriage. Born in a village in southeast Ukraine, she studied in Moscow in the 1970s before settling in the Ukrainian capital. Now in her mid-fifties, she is employed in the Kiev office of a Moscow-based pharmaceutical firm. Irina has spent 30 years traveling between the two cities.

“I work for a Russian company,” she mutters hesitantly to the female border guard examining her documents. After a lengthy pause, the guard hands back her papers. “We can all get on after all,” the Russian replies. “There’s so little good news these days.”

Irina has happy memories of Moscow — the city of her student days where she met her husband. For years she would attend university reunions in the Russian capital, where old friends would catch up over semi-sweet wine high up in the Moscow suburbs. But that was before the Maidan. “It’s all different now,” she sighs.

Ukrainians and Russians have been torn apart by a war few understand. Kiev and Moscow, once cities with shared histories, are now unrecognizable to one another. On the 13-hour journey between the two capitals, passengers try to make sense of the conflict.

Like many of the men on the train, Vadim is seeking work in Russia, where wages for unskilled labor are still considerably higher than in Ukraine. After spending a week in his family home in Zhytomyr, west of Kiev, he is returning to his factory job outside Moscow. “Nobody wanted this war,” murmurs Vadim, a clean-cut man of about 30, as he sips from a bottle of kvass, a fizzy drink made from fermented black bread.

Vadim was at home in Zhytomyr during the last days of the Maidan protests in Kiev. When he returned to Moscow, he found a different Russia. His boss hung a poster that read “Maidan: We Will Not Forget or Forgive.” At work, he watched Russian television with his co-workers. But his family and friends painted a different version of events from back home, as did his social media accounts. Vadim says Ukrainian migrants who had been in Russia for longer than he had were particularly receptive to the Kremlin’s propaganda. “They are bitter that they had to leave their country to have a better life. I understand them,” he says.

Vadim hopes these will be his last six months working in the Russian factory. Moscow’s financial crisis is putting migrants off, and he wants to be able to support his family from home. “This country,” he says as we travelled through Ukraine, “should be rich.” He points to the pot-holed roads outside the train window. “It’s not because we can’t build roads. It’s because the money disappears,” he grumbles. A year after President Viktor Yanukovich fled Ukraine, Vadim sees little progress in the fight against his country’s rampant corruption.

Ihor, our conductor, has recently been promoted, and it is his first day on the job on the Kiev-Moscow run. “Before the war,” he says, using a now-common Ukrainian refrain that, sadly, does not refer to World War II, he was on the Kiev-Voronezh line. It closed last summer due to its proximity to the war zone.

One of this conflict’s many victims has been public transportation. Often there is no official information on train and bus cancellations. Russians and Ukrainians have taken to social media to share tips for crossing the border, but Internet forums are notoriously unreliable. Tickets for trains that no longer run are still available for sale online, Ihor says, adding: “You know, the Internet also says Donetsk airport is up and working.”

The following morning we wake up in Moscow. The Russian capital is gearing up for Victory Day on May 9 — the World War II commemoration that Vladimir Putin has chosen as a forum to promote his version of Russian history. This year’s parade will be especially significant — not only because it marks 70 years since the victory over the Nazis, but also because many Russians believe that, by defying the West and taking Crimea, Russia has turned the tide of history again. In Moscow, giant billboards show “important dates of the Russian army” and the St George ribbon — a Russian military symbol adopted by Russian-backed rebels in eastern Ukraine — is everywhere.

“We don’t speak the same language anymore,” says Irina, who herself comes from a Russian speaking Ukrainian family. She’s right: after we cross into Russia “annexation” becomes “unification,” “rebels” become “freedom fighters,” “invasion” becomes “liberation”.

In Moscow, the Ukrainian conductors have five hours to kill before the train goes back to Kiev. Ihor, not wanting to set foot in Russia, says he will remain in his carriage for the whole time, and sends his female assistant, Halina, to help passengers off the train. As I step onto the platform, I find Halina looking up at Ihor from outside. “We all react differently when we are hurt,” she says.

Ola Cichowlas is a journalist covering Russia and eastern Europe. Follow her on Twitter at @olacicho