Russian forces are intensifying attacks on Ukraine’s railway infrastructure in an effort to disrupt passenger, freight and military transport and strain its wartime economy, according to Ukrainian officials.
A series of drone and missile strikes on Thursday hit substations powering the national rail network, forcing delays of up to three hours for several long-distance trains and injuring at least five people in Ukraine’s central Poltava region, according to regional governor Volodymyr Kohut. A strike in the region’s Myrhorod district wounded a civilian and sparked fires, he added.
Those strikes followed attacks overnight on Tuesday into Wednesday that delayed at least 26 trains and damaged railway hubs.
Ukraine’s rail system is critical to its military effort, serving as a main artery for transporting troops, equipment and western-supplied arms to the front. By hitting energy infrastructure that supports the network, Russia is seeking to slow deliveries and strain Kyiv’s capacity to defend itself as Moscow continues its ground offensive in the east and dials up its aerial bombardment on the capital and other cities.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on a visit to the eastern front on Thursday that his troops were “conducting one of our counteroffensive operations in the Donetsk direction . . . in the Pokrovsk and Dobropillia areas”. The two cities have been in Russia’s crosshairs and under relentless drone attacks and ground assaults.
Ukraine’s top general, Oleksandr Syrsky, said his forces had taken back some 160 sq km.
“The fighting is intense, but we have inflicted significant losses on the Russians,” Zelenskyy said. He added that Kyiv’s troops had also captured about 100 Russian soldiers in the operation.
Passenger trains to and from Poland are also the main mode of transport for foreign leaders visiting Kyiv, as Ukraine’s airspace has remained shut since 2022.
“Russia is deliberately targeting railway infrastructure,” Ukrainian deputy prime minister Oleksii Kuleba said following the attacks on Wednesday. He said “a massive drone strike” had “tried to disable substations that power the railway network”.
The strikes “have a clear goal — to complicate the transport of passengers and cargo, disrupt the stable operation of transportation, and create additional pressure on people and the economy”, he said.
Oleksandr Pertsovskyi, chair of the board of Ukraine’s state railway company Ukrzaliznytsia, described the Russian attacks as “complex”, targeting power substations, locomotive depots and passenger stations.
“Drones are massively attacking our key stations,” he said. “They are attacking hub stations practically all over the country.” Some hubs had been “destroyed”, he added.
Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, has shown no willingness to halt his invasion unless Ukraine agrees to his maximalist demands, as US-led efforts to broker a peace deal sputter.
President Donald Trump on Thursday acknowledged that his diplomatic push had been harder than expected and said Putin “has really let me down”.
Two Russian personnel decisions this week suggested Putin was not interested in peace.
Russian news outlet RBK reported on Thursday that Putin had extended Valery Gerasimov’s term as chief of the general staff for another five years. As the top official overseeing the war, Gerasimov won Putin’s backing for his “meat grinder” strategy with little regard to soldiers’ lives. He has been spotted frequently alongside the president at public events, apparently surviving an ongoing purge of senior defence officials.
The Kremlin separately said on Thursday that Dmitry Kozak, a senior official in Putin’s presidential administration who had sought ways to end the war, resigned from his post. Kozak was one of the highest-ranking figures to have made his opposition to the war known behind closed doors, according to people who know him. Putin let him retain his post, during which time Kozak drafted plans for a potential peace agreement.
But as the Russian president decided to press for a full victory in Ukraine, Kozak’s influence faded. His responsibilities for overseeing Moscow’s ties with former Soviet states were passed on to another top official, Sergei Kirienko, earlier this year.
Russian forces have in recent months repeatedly struck railway hubs in frontline eastern Donetsk and Kharkiv regions, as well as in central Ukraine, in what officials and analysts have described as a campaign to degrade Kyiv’s logistics.
The focus on energy substations that support the network mirrors Moscow’s earlier strategy of targeting the electricity grid to sap Ukraine’s resilience ahead of winter, when demand is highest.
Despite the strikes, rail operations have proved resilient. Ukrzaliznytsia said its contingency protocols, developed since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion, ensured trains could keep running even on sections without any power.
To keep trains moving, it this week deployed more than 20 reserve diesel locomotives. The disruption forced emergency transfers for international passengers. Travellers on the Dnipro — Chełm line heading west were met in Poland by buses to Lublin and Warsaw.
“The key point,” said Kuleba, is that “even such massive attacks will not stop Ukraine’s transport arteries and, in particular, Ukrainian railways”.
The railway company, with its roughly 20,000km of tracks, was tested in the early weeks of the invasion, as millions of Ukrainians fled west, using the trains as a lifeline that ferried them away from Russian bombs and troops.
The company has prided itself on its ability to keep the country running and its trains largely on time, despite the war.
