Fear and Disruption for Ukraine's Rail Passengers as Russia Escalates Drone Attacks
Ukrzaliznytsia said Russian drone attacks forced an average of 205 train stoppages a day as strikes on locomotives rose sharply this year.
- Russian drone attacks forced 5,831 train evacuations in September, Ukrzaliznytsia told AFP news agency on Monday. This meant an average of 205 trains were stopped daily across Ukraine's critical railway network.
- Ukrzaliznytsia CEO Oleksandr Pertsovskyi described the conflict as a "game of cat and mouse," noting Russia's latest drones now utilize AI tools and image recognition for precision targeting of moving locomotives.
- Of 521 locomotives hit since Russia's full-scale invasion, almost 60% were struck this year. Marketing specialist Yuliia Ponomarenko, 27, from Kharkiv saw her journey to Warsaw interrupted last month near the Ukraine-Poland frontier.
- Attacks on railway facilities surged to 1,700 this year from 1,206 in 2025, prompting Pertsovskyi to state that "the life of our passengers and crew members is the utmost priority."
- With each drone maintaining a 100km circle of threat, frequent evacuations occur in cities like Kyiv. Passengers now monitor Telegram channels for updates as the "latest wave of escalation" makes rail travel unpredictable.
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The evacuations mainly concern the south and east of the country, where passengers have to leave the wagons at every threat detected. These interruptions have caused up to 18 hours of delay in September on a network that has become indispensable since the closure of airspace.
Passengers were evacuated from more than 5,800 Ukrainian train services in September due to the threat of Russian drone strikes, the national railway operator told AFP on Monday.
The longest stop lasted more than 6 hours
Ukrainians traveling by train are increasingly caught in the crosshairs of Russia's attacks.
More than 5,800 train journeys were evacuated in Ukraine in September due to drone threats, Ukrainian railway company Ukrzaliznytsia told AFP on Monday.
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