A 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”.
Former CIA chief David Petraeus, who had been on board another train at Yahodyn station at the time of the strike, said the incident was “terrifying”.
In an interview with the New York Times, Petraeus said: “This is the act of a truly barbaric leader trying to terrorize Ukrainian civilians.”
In a statement, Ukrzaliznytsia said the train “had left the station earlier than expected because of the timetable change… due to constant threats of Russian strikes”.
It also said an evacuation order for passengers on the hit train had been given “just 15 minutes” before the strike by a Russian jet-propelled drone.
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” and urged Kyiv’s allies to urgently provide Ukrainians “the air defences they need”.
Ukraine has made repeated pleas to its allies – particularly the US – to provide more interceptors to defend against daily Russian attacks that increasingly use fast-moving ballistic missiles and jet-propelled drones.
