Russian Drone Hits Train Minutes After Boris Johnson Leaves Station

A Russian drone has struck a train near Ukraine's border with Poland, shortly after Boris Johnson and senior European security officials had travelled along the same line. The strike at Yahodyn hit the train's engine. No casualties were reported, and Ukrainian authorities said all passengers had been evacuated beforehand. The former prime minister and other European national security advisers, among them the UK's Jonathan Powell, had passed through on a different train while returning from a conference in Kyiv.

Russia said it had targeted railway infrastructure in western Ukraine. Ukraine's state railway company, Ukrzaliznytsia, offered a starker reading, suggesting that quite possibly the target of the drone had been the diplomatic train. The company said that train had left the station earlier than expected because of a timetable change forced by the constant threat of Russian strikes. It added that the evacuation order for passengers on the train that was hit had come just 15 minutes before the jet-propelled drone struck. Ukrainian and Polish authorities both said the weapon landed 2km from the Polish border.

David Petraeus, the former CIA director, was on board another train at Yahodyn station when the attack occurred. He described the incident as terrifying. "This is the act of a truly barbaric leader trying to terrorize Ukrainian civilians," he told the New York Times. Carl Bildt, the former Swedish prime minister, who had also attended the conference in Kyiv, said passengers on his train had been told to prepare for evacuation before being allowed to continue. "On the train I was on we received order to prepare evacuation after it had stopped. But after a number of minutes we were informed that it was clear and we could proceed," he said. That train later arrived safely at Dorohusk, on the Polish side of the border. Some reports suggested Bildt had shared a train with Johnson, though the former UK prime minister has not confirmed the details.

Johnson wrote on X that he did not know what warped logic had driven Vladimir Putin to destroy a stationary Ukrainian locomotive on the Polish border. He called it the kind of random and senseless attack Ukrainians endure every day, even on civilian railways, and urged Kyiv's allies to supply the air defences Ukraine needs without delay. Ukraine has repeatedly pressed its partners, the United States chief among them, for more interceptors to counter daily Russian attacks that increasingly rely on fast-moving ballistic missiles and jet-propelled drones.

Andrii Sybiha, Ukraine's foreign minister, said the barbaric strikes at Yahodyn amounted to Putin's terror knocking directly on the doors of the EU and Nato. He renewed calls for tougher sanctions on Moscow. "Putin needs to understand that his barbarism will be met with decisive action that increases the cost of war for him to an unacceptable level," he said. "This is the only way to stop him." In Poland, Prime Minister Donald Tusk convened an emergency meeting. "The escalation of the actions from the Russian side is becoming a reality, and they are getting closer and closer to our border," he said. Kaja Kallas, the EU's foreign policy chief, accused Russia of trying to frighten Western countries. "I think we should act the opposite. We should show that we are there for Ukraine and we are not scared," she told reporters in Finland during a summit on Arctic strategy.

Johnson and the other advisers were returning from the Yalta European Strategy conference in Kyiv, an annual gathering of leaders and experts from politics, business, security and the media. The strike fits a broader pattern. Russia appears to be escalating its war by targeting trains, railway depots, petrol stations and border crossings. Earlier this week, two people were killed when Russian drones hit a border crossing between Ukraine and Moldova, according to President Volodymyr Zelensky. A female conductor died in a drone attack on a passenger train in southern Ukraine, and six Ukrzaliznytsia employees were killed when a depot in Kyiv was struck at the start of the month. In January, Zelensky condemned as terrorism a Russian strike on a crowded passenger train in the north-eastern Kharkiv region that left five people dead.

The attacks have badly damaged Ukraine's extensive rail network, the main means of transport for millions of Ukrainians since all air travel was suspended after Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022. European governments are also pointing the finger at Moscow for suspicious incidents on their own territory. Last week, Germany blamed Russia for a drone attack on Leipzig's airport in August, a claim Moscow dismissed as absurd. A series of suspicious fires at defence facilities from Italy to Estonia has prompted similar accusations. Russian authorities, for their part, have accused Ukraine of targeting trains and buses in recent months. Last year, Ukraine's Security Service said it had struck a railway bridge in Crimea after an operation lasting several months. The Kerch Bridge was built by Russia after it invaded and annexed the Crimean peninsula in 2014, and was inaugurated by Putin to considerable fanfare in 2018.

The World House, which maintains a dedicated page outlining its support for Ukraine at worldhouse.uk/support, continues to document the consequences of Russia's unprovoked aggression.