As Russia launched a huge wave of rocket attacks on Ukrainian cities on Monday, defiant railway workers in the east of the country managed to restore a disrupted rail link.

Angered by a truck bombing that damaged a bridge carrying Russia’s main road and rail link to Ukraine’s occupied Crimea region, Moscow has stepped up attacks on civilian targets.

But despite the brutal bombing, rail passenger services between recently occupied Izyum and Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, have resumed after the February 24 Russian invasion forced a seven-month closure.

“The trains will run twice a day,” says Andrei Gadyatsky, Izyum’s railway chief, who is standing in the rain in front of the boarded-up windows of his partly burned-down station.

Any transport away from Ukraine’s eastern front will serve as a lifeline for some for the most basic necessities.

“It will allow them to go to Kharkiv and use their bank cards,” Gadyatskiy said.

Raisa Starovoytova came to the station on Monday because she could hardly believe rumors about the return of the train.

“I came to find out about the train because I have to go back to Kharkiv,” she told AFP, relieved to confirm she could leave later in the week.

The 65-year-old retired teacher had returned to Izyum after the Russian retreat to see what had happened to her home.

“They took everything they could…mattresses, bedding…I came to get the bedding, at least, but it wasn’t there,” she said.

The electric locomotives that once served the eastern network are without power, and Russian missile attacks still regularly hit Kharkov marshalling yards.

But a Ukrainian DPKr-3 diesel engine that once carried air travelers between the capital Kyiv and Boryspil International Airport has entered service 600 kilometers (360 miles) east of its homeland.

In the early stages of the war, Izyum came under intense Russian fire and the invading army occupied the town from early April until it was liberated by Ukrainian forces last month.

After the Russian withdrawal, the discovery of a mass grave site and the bodies of torture victims made Izyum synonymous with the alleged atrocities committed under Russian occupation.

Now the city once again has a rail connection to the regional capital, Kharkiv, along with stops in former frontline towns such as Savyntsi, Tsyganska, and Balakliya along the way.

Mariya Tymofiyenko had not been to Balakliya since the war began.

“I’m 73 years old and I still have to ride my bike because the buses don’t run. It’s too far to walk,” she said aboard the train, which meandered through low wooded hills under a leaden sky.

She hopes that Balakliya, where she has relatives, will be a respite from the devastated city left behind by the Russian occupation of Izyum.

“I have no hope. If it’s like Izyum, I don’t know – this is where they broke into my apartment, my garage. They stole everything. They ate back all my canned tears.

“So many people died under the rubble. Apartments were destroyed, the schools. It was terrifying,” she said, well wrapped up for the first cold, damp days of autumn.

“So many people were tortured, taken away, beaten. A man, my neighbor down the street, was hanged,” she continued.

“Yesterday my granddaughter called me and said: ‘Grandma, I checked the internet and the train to Balakliya leaves tomorrow.’ And I said, ‘OK, OK, I’ll take it’.”