In the fourth year of Russia's war on Ukraine, the country's railways — long a lifeline connecting citizens to work, family, and safety — have become a deliberate theater of disruption. Drone strikes on locomotives and rail infrastructure have surged dramatically in 2026, forcing thousands of daily evacuations and confronting ordinary passengers with the raw arithmetic of survival. What was once a proud peacetime network now operates as a kind of moving front line, its operators navigating between the imperative to keep the country connected and the growing sophistication of the weapons arraye
Russia escalates drone attacks on Ukrainian railways, forcing mass evacuations
Eight railway employees killed in 2026, including six in a ballistic missile strike on a Kyiv depot; thousands of civilians repeatedly evacuated from moving trains in dangerous conditions.
I'm not going to travel by train anymore
Mark
So the core of this is that Russia has shifted its targeting toward civilian railways, not just military transport?
Mimi
Not quite. Russia says it's only targeting military infrastructure—trains carrying troops and equipment. But the effect is that civilian passengers are being evacuated constantly, sometimes multiple times in a single journey. Whether the intent is to hit civilians or the infrastructure happens to carry both is the question.
Luke
And we should be clear: the source doesn't have evidence of deliberate targeting of civilian passengers. Russia denies it, Ukraine hasn't provided proof either way. What we know is that civilians are being caught in the disruption.
Mark
The numbers are staggering. Five thousand trains evacuated in one month?
Mimi
In September alone, yes. That's 205 trains a day on average. For a country trying to function—people getting to work, to family, to safety—that's paralyzing.
Luke
Though we should note that "evacuated" means the trains were stopped and passengers got out. It doesn't necessarily mean they were all hit or damaged. The evacuation is precautionary, which is smart, but it's worth distinguishing between "train was evacuated" and "train was attacked."
Mark
What about the people? How are they actually coping?
Mimi
You see it in the stories. Yuliia was lucky—delayed just enough that she wasn't the train hit. Anastasiia was evacuated multiple times and decided she won't take trains anymore. That's the real impact: people losing faith in a system they depend on.
Luke
And we don't have broad data on how many people have stopped using trains, or what the economic impact is of that. We have individual stories, which are powerful, but the scale of civilian disruption beyond the raw evacuation numbers isn't fully quantified.
Mark
The drones are getting smarter?
Mimi
Yes. The newest ones have AI and image recognition, so they can track moving targets. That's a significant escalation from earlier in the war.
Luke
Pertsovskyi says that, but we don't have independent verification of those capabilities. It's his assessment of what Russia is deploying. It may be accurate, but it's one source's analysis of Russian technology.
Mark
And winter is the next crisis?
Mimi
Exactly. Evacuating people from trains in minus-20-degree weather with snow on the ground is a different problem entirely. The railway company is preparing shelters and evacuation packs, but it's a race against time and weather.
Luke
They're preparing, which is good. But we don't know yet if those preparations will be adequate, or what the actual winter will bring. That's still ahead of us.
Der Puls
- Russia's drone campaign against Ukrainian railways has intensified sharply in 2026, with nearly 60% of all locomotive damage since the invasion recorded in this year alone and daily train stoppages averaging over 200 in September.
- Passengers — including a 17-year-old evacuated multiple times in a single week — are being forced off trains in the dark, sometimes fleeing explosions into forests, with some vowing never to board again.
- AI-equipped drones with image recognition now track moving trains with precision, creating an asymmetric threat that Ukraine's electronic countermeasures can slow but not stop, a dynamic Ukrzaliznytsia's own chief calls 'a cat-and-mouse game.'
- Railway staff monitor the network from an underground command center in Kyiv, drawing 100-kilometer exclusion zones around every detected drone and evacuating any passenger train within range — a protocol that has kept deaths low but exhaustion high.
- With winter approaching and temperatures potentially dropping to minus 20 Celsius, Ukraine's railway operator is racing to deploy mobile shelters, evacuation packs, and bus contingencies before cold transforms inconvenience into a survival crisis.
In the fourth year of Russia's war on Ukraine, the country's railways — long a lifeline connecting citizens to work, family, and safety — have become a deliberate theater of disruption. Drone strikes on locomotives and rail infrastructure have surged dramatically in 2026, forcing thousands of daily evacuations and confronting ordinary passengers with the raw arithmetic of survival. What was once a proud peacetime network now operates as a kind of moving front line, its operators navigating between the imperative to keep the country connected and the growing sophistication of the weapons arrayed against them.
Ukraine's railways have quietly become one of the war's most contested spaces. Since 2022 they have kept the country moving — connecting people to work, to family, to escape — but 2026 brought a sharp and deliberate escalation. Attacks on rail facilities climbed from 1,206 in 2025 to 1,700 so far this year, and nearly 60 percent of all locomotive damage since the invasion has occurred in these months alone.
The human texture of that disruption is vivid. Yuliia Ponomarenko, 27, was hours from the Polish border when her train stopped abruptly — a drone had struck a locomotive ahead, and the tracks were burning. She waited six hours in her carriage. A train carrying Boris Johnson and European dignitaries had passed the same stretch minutes before. Anastasiia Ryvbalchenko, 17, was evacuated multiple times in a single week, once at 4 a.m. between Odesa and Kirovohrad. An hour and a half into the roadside wait, a drone struck nearby and passengers scattered into the woods. She walked the rest of the way and was collected by her parents. She says she will not travel by train again.
The threat has grown more precise. Russia's newest drones carry AI systems and image recognition capable of tracking moving targets, a combination Ukrzaliznytsia's chief Oleksandr Pertsovskyi described as the marriage of lethal force and surgical accuracy. Ukraine is developing electronic countermeasures, but Pertsovskyi is candid: the advantage shifts constantly. From an underground command center in Kyiv, staff watch colour-coded trains move across the network in real time. When a red drone icon appears, a 100-kilometer exclusion circle is drawn and every passenger train inside it is evacuated immediately. The protocol has limited the death toll — eight railway workers killed in 2026, six in a single missile strike on a Kyiv depot — but the cumulative exhaustion on passengers and staff alike is immense.
Now Ukrzaliznytsia is preparing for winter, when evacuating passengers into minus-20 temperatures and snow transforms disruption into danger. Mobile shelters, emergency packs, and bus services are being arranged with international donors for the most frequently struck corridors. Pertsovskyi frames it as reinvention rather than defeat: a railway reshaped by war, but one that intends to keep connecting the country regardless of season or strike.
Ukraine's railways have become a front line in a war that was supposed to be fought far away. Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in 2022, the country's trains have kept moving, kept connecting people to work and home and safety. But this year, something shifted. The attacks came faster, harder, and closer to the passengers themselves.
Yuliia Ponomarenko was 27, a marketing specialist heading to Warsaw last month, when her train lurched to a stop just short of the Poland border. Border guards were shouting. A Russian drone had struck a locomotive ahead of them, and the line ahead was burning. She and the other passengers waited six hours in their carriages while the fire was extinguished and the tracks cleared. "We were really lucky that we were delayed a little and it wasn't our train," she said later. A special train carrying Boris Johnson and other European dignitaries had passed through the same stretch minutes before the strike.
In September alone, the state-owned railway operator Ukrzaliznytsia reported that 5,831 trains were evacuated due to Russian drone attacks. That averaged to 205 trains stopped each day. The numbers tell one story; the lived experience tells another. Anastasiia Ryvbalchenko was 17 when she was forced off her train at 4 in the morning on September 16, somewhere between Odesa and Kirovohrad. She had already been evacuated multiple times that week. "I was already thinking that if there was another evacuation, I just couldn't take it any more," she said. An hour and a half later, as passengers waited in darkness, a drone struck nearby. The explosion sent everyone running into the woods. She eventually walked the rest of the way and was picked up by her parents. "I'm not going to travel by train anymore," she said.
The scale of the damage has been relentless. Of the 521 locomotives hit since Russia's invasion began, almost 60 percent have been damaged this year alone. Overall attacks on railway facilities jumped from 1,206 in 2025 to 1,700 so far in 2026. Oleksandr Pertsovskyi, the head of Ukrzaliznytsia, described it plainly: "The latest wave of escalation and real war with railways is becoming extremely intense." Russia's defence ministry denies targeting civilians, claiming instead that it strikes only at infrastructure used to move military personnel and equipment. The distinction has become academic for the thousands of ordinary passengers caught in the crossfire.
The sophistication of the threat has also evolved. Russia's newest drones are equipped with artificial intelligence tools and image recognition systems, allowing them to track and hit moving targets with precision. Pertsovskyi acknowledged the asymmetry: "It's a combination of the deadly force of their shahed drones and precision that they achieve with cameras and mesh networks." Ukraine is working on electronic methods to disrupt the drones' connectivity, but he was candid about the limits. "Unfortunately, this is always a cat-and-mouse game," he said.
Inside an underground bunker in Kyiv known as the Iron Command Centre, railway staff monitor threats in real time on massive video screens. Colour-coded trains move across the network like blood cells through veins. When a drone appears—represented by a red icon—a 100-kilometre circle is drawn around it. Any passenger train inside that circle is evacuated immediately. Passengers cannot reboard until the train has moved outside the circle and the drone is confirmed to be moving away. The precautions have kept casualties relatively low: eight railway employees killed in 2026, six of them in a single ballistic missile strike on a locomotive depot in Kyiv.
But the human cost extends beyond the dead. The routine has become exhausting. Passengers leave trains, scroll Telegram channels for updates on drone and missile launches, send warnings to friends and family about delays. Some delays last hours. For a railway company that once took pride in its punctuality—better than some European railways in peacetime—the disruption represents a fundamental challenge to its identity and mission.
Winter is coming, and Pertsovskyi and his team are already preparing for a new kind of crisis. When temperatures drop to minus 20 degrees Celsius and snow covers the ground, evacuating passengers from trains becomes not just an inconvenience but a survival question. Ukrzaliznytsia is working with international donors to prepare winter evacuation packs, mobile shelters, and bus services for areas where evacuations happen too frequently. "We might be a slightly different railway, a reinvented railway," Pertsovskyi said. "But we'll keep connecting the country, no matter what, be it winter, be it summer, no matter how hard the enemy hits us."
Bemerkenswerte Zitate
The latest wave of escalation and real war with railways is becoming extremely intense.— Oleksandr Pertsovskyi, head of Ukrzaliznytsia
We might be a slightly different railway, a reinvented railway. But we'll keep connecting the country, no matter what.— Oleksandr Pertsovskyi
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