TelegramA Russian drone has hit a train near the Ukraine-Poland border shortly after former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and top European security officials had passed through.
No casualties were reported after the strike at Yahodyn, which hit the train’s engine. All the passengers had been evacuated, Ukrainian authorities said.
Johnson and other European national security advisers, including the UK’s Jonathan Powell, had passed along the same line on a different train on their way back from a conference in Kyiv.
Russia said it had struck “railway infrastructure” in western Ukraine, but Ukraine’s state railway company Ukrzaliznytsia said that “quite possibly, the target of this drone could have been the diplomatic train”.
It also said that an evacuation order for passengers on the hit train had been given “just 15 minutes” before the strike by a Russian jet-propelled drone.
The railway authority also said former CIA chief David Petraeus had been on board another train at Yahodyn station at the time of the drone strike.
Both Ukrainian and Polish authorities said the Russian drone had struck 2km from the Polish border.
Former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt, who had also attended the conference in Kyiv, told the BBC passengers on board his train had been told to prepare for evacuation before subsequently being allowed to continue their journey.
“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 then safely arrived at Poland’s border station in Dorohusk.
Some reports have suggested Bildt was on the same train as Johnson, but the former UK prime minister has not confirmed any details.
Johnson wrote on X: “I don’t know what warped logic drove Putin to blow up a stationary Ukrainian locomotive on the Polish border this morning.
He said this was “the kind of random and senseless attack Ukrainians are enduring every day – even on civilian railways”.
Johnson also said Russian President Vladimir Putin “has been responsible for the deaths of 1,700 staff of Ukrzaliznytsia”, urging Kyiv’s allies to urgently provide Ukrainians “the air defences they need”.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said the “barbaric strikes” at the Ukraine-Poland border in Yahodyn amounted to “Putin’s terror ‘knocking’ directly on the doors of the EU and Nato” and renewed calls for more 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. This is the only way to stop him,” he said.
In Poland, Prime Minister Donald Tusk held an emergency meeting to discuss the latest developments.
“The escalation of the actions from the Russian side is becoming a reality, and they are getting closer and closer to our border.”
Johnson and other top European security advisers were on their way back from the Yalta European Strategy (YES) conference in Kyiv – an annual event that brings together leaders and experts from politics, business, security and mass media.
Global Images Ukraine via Getty ImagesRussia has in recent months carried out a number of deadly attacks targeting Ukraine’s trains, railway depots and other transport facilities.
Earlier this month, six employees of the state railway company Ukrzaliznytsia were killed after a depot was hit in Kyiv.
This week, a female conductor died in a Russian drone attack on a passenger train in southern Ukraine.
In January, President Volodymyr Zelensky condemned as “terrorism” a Russian strike on a crowded passenger train in the north-eastern Kharkiv region that left five people dead.
The Russian attacks have significantly damaged Ukraine’s vast train network – the main mode of transportation for millions of Ukrainians as all air travel has been suspended since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022.
