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A Russian drone recently struck a train near the Ukraine-Poland border shortly after former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and senior European security officials had traveled the same route. The incident occurred at Yahodyn, where the drone hit the engine of the train. Fortunately, Ukrainian authorities reported that no casualties resulted from the attack, as all passengers were evacuated prior to the strike.
Johnson and other high-profile security advisers, including Jonathan Powell from the UK, had traveled on a different train along the same railway line after attending a conference in Kyiv. While Russia claimed the strike targeted “railway infrastructure” in western Ukraine, Ukraine’s state railway company, Ukrzaliznytsia, suggested the drone may have been aimed at the diplomatic train itself. The company noted that the struck train had departed earlier than planned due to schedule changes prompted by ongoing threats of Russian attacks. Furthermore, passengers were ordered to evacuate just 15 minutes before the drone strike hit the train.
The railway authority also revealed that David Petraeus, the former head of the CIA, was on a separate train at Yahodyn station when the attack occurred. Both Ukrainian and Polish officials confirmed that the drone struck approximately 2 kilometers from the Polish border. Carl Bildt, the former Prime Minister of Sweden who attended the Kyiv conference, described his own train’s experience, mentioning that passengers were initially instructed to prepare for evacuation but were later told it was safe to continue. His train later arrived without incident at Dorohusk, near the Poland border.
There has been some speculation about Bildt traveling on the same train as Boris Johnson; however, Johnson has not confirmed this. On social media, Johnson condemned the strike as senseless, stating, “I don’t know what warped logic drove Putin to blow up a stationary Ukrainian locomotive on the Polish border this morning.” He further emphasized that such attacks reflect the daily struggles Ukrainians face and highlighted the human cost, noting that Russian President Vladimir Putin “has been responsible for the deaths of 1,700 staff of Ukrzaliznytsia.” Johnson urged Kyiv’s allies to urgently provide enhanced air defences to counter Russia’s increasingly sophisticated attacks involving ballistic missiles and jet-propelled drones.
The recent drone strike appears to be part of a broader pattern of escalating Russian attacks targeting Ukraine’s train network, including railway depots and border crossings. Earlier in the week, Russian drones struck a border crossing between Ukraine and Moldova, killing two people, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. In another incident, a female train conductor lost her life during a drone attack on a passenger train in southern Ukraine. At the beginning of the month, a railway depot in Kyiv was hit, killing six employees of Ukrzaliznytsia.
President Zelensky condemned these attacks, describing previous strikes, such as one on a crowded passenger train in the Kharkiv region that resulted in five deaths, as acts of terrorism. Ukraine’s railway infrastructure has suffered significant damage amid the conflict, yet remains crucial for transportation since Ukraine’s airspace has been closed since Russia’s full-scale invasion began in 2022.
European nations have also reported suspicious incidents on their own soil, which they attribute to Russian actions. Recently, Germany blamed Moscow for a drone strike at Leipzig airport in August, a charge Moscow dismissed as “absurd.” Additionally, unexplained fires at several defense facilities from Italy to Estonia have raised suspicions of Russian involvement, further demonstrating the broader impact of the conflict on the region
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