Russian Strike Hits Train Near Ukraine-Poland Border Hours After Johnson and European Officials’ Passage

A Russian strike struck a train near the Ukraine-Poland border shortly after former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and a delegation of senior European officials had traveled along the same route.

No casualties were reported in the attack, which targeted the train’s engine.

Johnson and several of Europe’s most senior security advisers, including UK National Security Adviser Jonathan Powell, had been traveling back from a conference in Kyiv along the same corridor.

Russia claimed on Sunday that it had hit “railway infrastructure” in western Ukraine. However, Johnson expressed bewilderment at the strike, stating: “I don’t know what warped logic drove Putin to blow up a stationary Ukrainian locomotive on the Polish border this morning,” and added: “When are we going to give them the air defences they need?”

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk confirmed that a Russian drone had struck a location approximately 800 meters from the Polish border.

Russia has increasingly targeted Ukraine’s rail network in recent months, launching deadly attacks on trains, railway depots, and other transport facilities throughout the conflict.

Earlier this month, six employees of the state railway company Ukrzaliznytsia were killed when a depot was struck in Kyiv.

This week, a female conductor was killed in a Russian drone attack on a passenger train in southern Ukraine.

In January, President Volodymyr Zelensky condemned a Russian strike on a crowded passenger train in the north-eastern Kharkiv region that killed five people, describing it as “terrorism.”

The sustained Russian attacks have inflicted significant damage on Ukraine’s extensive rail network, which remains the primary mode of transportation for millions of Ukrainians, as all air travel has been suspended since the launch of Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022.

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