Russia steps up strikes on Ukraine rail network

Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said Russia has damaged or destroyed more than 500 locomotives since the full-scale invasion began in February 2022, with more than half of those losses coming in the last eight months. Ukrzaliznytsia, the state railway operator, is reportedly losing 37 to 40 locomotives a month, a pace that is outstripping Ukraine’s ability to replace them.

The attacks also raise the cost of doing business and the risk premium around Ukraine’s logistics chain. Each locomotive costs about €5 million, or roughly $5.7 million, and officials say the country does not have enough domestic resources to cover the damage quickly, forcing reliance on lenders and partners including the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the World Bank.

Russia is adapting its tactics too. Ukrainian railway chief Oleksandr Pertsovskyi said Moscow increasingly uses jet-powered “Geran”-type drones, which can reach 400 to 600 kilometers per hour and are harder to intercept, and has added mesh-network antennas that allow operators to guide drones in real time toward moving trains.

That has turned rail infrastructure into a direct battlefield target near NATO territory as well. Russia on Sept. 13 struck the Yahodyn railway station in western Ukraine, just four kilometers from the Polish border, in what Ukrainian officials said may have been aimed at a train carrying diplomats, including former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and security advisers.

The strategic logic is clear: disrupt the transport corridors that sustain Ukraine’s economy and war effort. Pertsovskyi said Moscow wants to isolate frontline communities, spread panic, and paralyze the economy, while Russian Defense Ministry claims it is hitting border crossings used for foreign military aid.

Ukraine is now pushing allies to help fill the gap, especially because its 1,520-millimeter rail gauge limits the pool of compatible rolling stock in Europe. Only the Baltic states and Finland use equipment that can readily fit the system, and Lithuania has separately pledged locomotives.

The pressure on infrastructure has already turned deadly for rail workers, with at least 52 Ukrzaliznytsia employees killed on duty and 317 injured, underscoring the human cost of a campaign that is now central to Russia’s wider effort to exhaust Ukraine’s economy and security network.