KEY SETTINGS AND STORY ELEMENTS
KYIV EXPRESS
A PKP Intercity train. (PKP).
The Kyiv Express is officially Polish State Railway Intercity trains D67 and D68. Because of the war, the train is now the most comfortable and reliable travel option into Kyiv. Two trains leave Warsaw and Kyiv every evening and arrive in the alternate capital the next morning. Unlike most overnight trains in North America, train D68 is a simple train, with no food or beverage car, lounge or observation car. Being a Polish train, The Kyiv Express runs as a non-stop sealed train through Ukraine until it arrives in Kyiv or Poland.
Logo of the Polish State Railways. (Polskie Koleje Państwowe).
Warsaw Centralna station was opened in 1975 to commemorate the state visit by Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev. It has been upgraded recently and is now considered an architectural landmark. Photo by: Radek Kołakowski, 2013 (Wikipedia).
Rachel and Kalyna’s ticket to Kyiv. (Pacifico Studios, 2025)
BABYN YAR
Babyn Yar is an area of western Kyiv of steep ravines and hills. In September 1941, German SS troops, aided by regular army soldiers, murdered over 30,000 Jews in two days. From then until the Soviets recaptured Kyiv in 1943, the Germans massacred Roma and Sinti, mental hospital patients, Ukrainian Slav artists, and ultimately, Soviet prisoners of war at Babyn Yar.
The day before Russia invades, Rachel and Kalyna visit Babyn Yar, an experience that stirs deep emotions in both of them; Rachel is Jewish, and Kalyna is from Kyiv. Therefore, minutes from the start of Ticket to Kyiv, the audience learns that both of these young women are capable of deep sincerity and thinking about other people.
Foreshadowing events soon to come, Rachel cannot understand how any normal person would murder even one innocent person, much less commit mass murder on a daily systematic basis.
One of the many monuments to the victims of Babyn Yar at the memorial site. Kyiv.
Babyn Yar reenters the story of Ticket to Kyiv a week after Russian invades, by showing the moment, during a British TV interview, that President Zelensky learns that the Russians have attacked the Babyn Yar area with missiles.
After Russian soldiers repeatedly fired artillery at it, the Holocaust memorial in Kharkiv, Ukraine was left in this condition.
Photos and information about just a few of those murdered at Babyn Yar, courtesy of Yad Vashem, The World Holocaust Remembrance Center, Jerusalem.
Firya Perlich (1927-1941). Kyiv. Daughter of Elchik and Niya Perlick. Murdered at Babyn Yar.
Yeva Malishkevich (1903-1941) and her baby (name unknown). Wife of Zyama Malishkevich. Daughter of Vulf and Berta Pishchik. She and her baby were murdered at Babi Yar.
Itzyk Beryland (1866-1941). Retired in Kyiv. Murdered at Babyn Yar.
Aleksander Vaisberg (1912-1941). Son of Aaron and Dvosya Vaisberg. A clerk in Kyiv. Husband of Betya Vaisberg. Murdered at Babyn Yar.
Tzetzilia Bykhovski (1915-1941). Kyiv. Daughter of Samuil and Zlata Bykhovski. Murdered at Babi Yar.
BATTLE OF HOSTOMEL
Near the Kyiv suburb of Hostomel lies the Antonov Airport, named after Soviet aircraft designer Oleg Antonov (1906-1984). Russia’s plan to take over Ukraine in days depended on their ability to capture this airport with troops in helicopters and transport aircraft to facilitate organizing a force capable of storming Kyiv. Consequently, the first indication that most Ukrainians received that Putin had sent in his troops was when missiles began slamming into Ukrainian air defense systems and airfields on the morning of 24 February 2022, and streams of helicopters flew low over over the Dnipro River toward Kyiv and Hostomel.
In Ticket to Kyiv, Rachel first indication that a war has started is when the explosions wake her up. However, her first suspicion is that there has been a major industrial accident north of Kyiv. She reports her suspicions to her parents over social media video, just before the Russians cut off Kyiv from the Internet for the next several days.
Russian trucks surge across the Ukrainian border, 24 February 2022.
DEFENSE OF KYIV
Irpin marks the approximate limit to which Russian troops advanced before being pushed back in late March 2022. Russian troops committed torture and murder on a mass scale in towns like Bucha, Hostomel and Makariv (WSW of Bucha). More information below.
As soon as the war began, all over the county, Ukrainian civilians hurriedly made firebombs (“Molotov Cocktails) to throw at Russian vehicles. Meanwhile, authorities distributed 18,000 guns on the first day of the war in Kyiv alone. By 26 February, 25,000 guns, ten million cartridges, along with rocket propelled grenades and shoulder-mounted rocket launchers had been distributed to the freshly-constituted Territorial Defense Forces around Kyiv. (Reuters, 2022)
Flames and smoke from burning military vehicles were a common sight around Kyiv from February to April 2022.
KYIV CLINICAL HOSPITAL NO. 12
Kyiv Clinical Hospital No. 12 is a typical Soviet Era-built hospital. By American standards, it is not very large, well-equipped or funded. There are better hospitals in Kyiv; this is just one of many that serve the basic emergency health needs of the local community.
Most of the action in Ticket to Kyiv occurs in the hospital, where Rachel and Kalyna work as volunteers to help the civilians and soldiers injured in the fighting. Part of the hospital has been damaged during the war; with windows blown out and debris scattered about after the floors affected were evacuated.
Kyiv Independent, 2022.
This recent (wartime) photo in the largest children’s hospital in Kyiv illustrates what a typical ex-Soviet hospital room looks like. The equipment is reasonably modern, but the building and fixtures (e.g., electrical connections) are constructed cheaply, and no effort has been devoted to enhancing the decor.
Notice the machine on the floor, resting on a footstool. Ukrainian hospitals are doing their best with the resources they have, but the consequences of being part of the Soviet Union for 70 years are not easy or inexpensive to overcome.
BUCHA MASSACRE
Between 24 February and 1 April 2022, Russian troops murdered and over 1,400 Ukrainian civilians in Kyiv Oblast. The greatest number of documented murders occurred in Bucha, where over 500 bodies were discovered. Many were found with their hands tied behind their backs before they were gunned down. Gang-rapes were also common. In recalling their experience, survivors reference the notorious Nazi Death Camp, calling their experience “Auschwitz Lite.”
In this map of Bucha, the Yablonka, Skozavodska and Lisova Bucha neighborhoods are highlighted as the violence by Russian soldiers in these locations appears to have been largely wholesale and genocidal. Source: Kyiv Independent.
Incidentally, the railroad in this map is the mainline from Kyiv to Warsaw.
In Ticket to Kyiv, a brief scene reduces the horror of life under Russian occupation to the last moments of one young woman, shown just after the Russian gang-raped her and just before a Russian murders her off-screen. In the next scene, Dr. Lyutsiya Bialyk relates that, after the Ukrainian army re-captured the area, they discovered that the Russians murdered her parents and her younger sister Olena. Rachel comforts her by awkwardly caressing Lyutsiya as they sit together during their lunch break.
Just some of the graves dug in Bucha after the Ukrainian army recaptured the area. Source: Kyiv Independent, 22 April 2022.
Satellite photos showing bodies lying in the streets of Bucha while the city was under Russian occupation disprove Russia’s denial of responsibility for genocide against the Ukrainian people. Source: BBC, 11 April 2022.
A handful of the people Russian soldiers murdered in Bucha.
Source: New York Times, 21 December 2022.
BELHAM, ENGLAND
Belham, a fictional town in southern England, is the setting of one of the most acclaimed American movies of 1942: Mrs. Miniver. Released by MGM, and directed by William Wyler, Mrs. Miniver is a simple tale of a family facing the danger, death, and destruction that Nazi Germany brings to their tiny corner of England in 1940. Winner of six Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress, and Best Supporting Actress, Mrs. Miniver is a major inspiration for Ticket to Kyiv.
Mrs. Miniver closes with a scene re-created in Ticket to Kyiv to connect the defense of Ukraine to the resistance of Great Britain against the Nazi onslaught: The vicar in the little town of Belham comforts the people in his bomb-damaged church by urging them to use the deaths of their family members and friends killed by German bombing as inspiration to defeat Nazism and restore the world to peace.
“We’re in an all-out war – a people’s war – it’s the time to face it. Let’s make propaganda pictures, but make them good… a propaganda picture doesn’t have to be filled with blood and brutality.”
William Wyler, at the release of Mrs. Miniver in 1942.
Royal Air Force fighters flying low over the symbolic cliffs of Dover.
“…its (Mrs. Miniver) refined powerful propagandistic tendency has up to now only been dreamed of. There is not a single angry word spoken against Germany; nevertheless the anti-German tendency is perfectly accomplished.”
Josef Goebbels, Reich Minister of Propaganda, 1933-1945, to his diary.
Prime Minister Winston Churchill surveys the damage and loss of life from German attacks on Coventry, England in 1941. Over 500 died and over 800 were seriously injured in just one night of intense bombing.
VOLODYMYR ZELENSKY
Volodymyr Zelensky, the charismatic and courageous elected leader of Ukraine appears enough times in Ticket to Kyiv to almost be a co-star. Four times in the film, he is shown at a critical moment during the world’s first war captured on social media:
24 February 2022: Hours before the invasion began
The first appearance of Volodymyr Zelensky in Ticket to Kyiv comes when Eric and Andrea Weiss watch a translated version of the speech he gave in Russian, urging the Russian people to pressure their leaders, hours before the invasion began.
25 February 2022: Day 2 of the invasion
On the evening of 25 February 2022, Kyiv time, after rumors swirled that Zelensky and his government had left the Ukrainian capital, President Zelensky gave a defiant speech alongside other leaders of the Ukrainian government in Kyiv.
1 March 2022: Attack on the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial
On 1 March 2022, when the Russian army hit the area around the Babyn Yar Holocaust memorial with a powerful missile, the blast was strong enough to not only kill five people, but set fire to the Holocaust museum then under-construction. Shortly thereafter, President Zelensky’s chief of staff interrupted an interview that Zelensky was giving to the British ITV network to inform him that the Babyn Yar monument had been attacked. The news visibly disturbed both of the men.
Zelensky’s laconic response: “That’s Russia for you. My congratulations” reflects a Ukrainian method of sarcastically expressing disappointment, similar to “Nice work, Einstein!” in American English. As he probably expected, both Jews and non-Jews around the world condemned the Russian attack on Babyn Yar.
16 March 2022: First speech by Zelensky to the U.S. Congress
NOTE: This video contains disturbing images that are not suitable for all viewers.
On 16 March 2022, President Zelensky addressed remotely a joint meeting of the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate. After a brief address, he asked the U.S. Congress assembled to view this video, before concluding the last portion of his speech in English.
This portion, showing actual victims of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, will give Ticket to Kyiv an emotional power that an ordinary drama cannot exert over its viewers.