Language Settings
Select Website Language

Russian Drone Hits Ukrainian Train After Boris Johnson Passes

46 minutes ago

A Russian drone struck a train near the Ukraine-Poland border at Yahodyn soon after Boris Johnson and European security chiefs passed through. No casualties.

A Russian drone struck a train at Yahodyn, close to Ukraine's western frontier with Poland, only a short time after former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and a group of senior European security officials had travelled along the same route. The weapon hit the locomotive's engine, and Ukrainian authorities reported no injuries because every passenger had already been cleared from the carriages.

Johnson had been returning from a conference in Kyiv alongside national security advisers from across Europe, among them Jonathan Powell of the United Kingdom. Their group travelled on a separate service on the same line before the attack. The blast landed two kilometres from the Polish border, according to officials in both Kyiv and Warsaw.

Moscow described the target as "railway infrastructure" in western Ukraine. Ukraine's national rail operator, Ukrzaliznytsia, offered a sharper reading, saying it was "quite possibly" the diplomatic train that the drone was aiming for. The company said the service carrying the officials had departed ahead of schedule after its timetable was altered in response to the persistent danger of Russian attacks.

Ukrzaliznytsia added that passengers on the train that was eventually hit received their evacuation order roughly 15 minutes before the strike, which it attributed to a Russian jet-propelled drone. The rail authority also said that David Petraeus, the former director of the CIA, had been aboard another train at Yahodyn station when the drone came down.

Carl Bildt, the former Swedish prime minister who had also joined the Kyiv conference, gave the BBC an account of the tense moments on his own journey. He said staff instructed travellers to ready themselves for evacuation once the train came to a halt, then reversed the order shortly afterwards. "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," Bildt said. That service went on to reach Dorohusk, the border station on the Polish side, without incident.

Several accounts placed Bildt on the same train as Johnson, though the former British leader has not confirmed the particulars of his trip. Johnson had been photographed at a book fair in Lviv during the previous week before joining the officials on the rail line.

Reacting on X, Johnson condemned the attack in blunt terms. "I don't know what warped logic drove Putin to blow up a stationary Ukrainian locomotive on the Polish border this morning," he wrote. He called it "the kind of random and senseless attack Ukrainians are enduring every day - even on civilian railways" and pressed Ukraine's partners to move quickly on delivering the air defences he said the country urgently requires.

That appeal echoes a demand Kyiv has made repeatedly, above all to Washington, for additional interceptors. Ukrainian officials say the country needs them to counter a growing volume of daily Russian strikes that now lean heavily on high-speed ballistic missiles and jet-propelled drones.

Ukraine's Foreign Minister, Andrii Sybiha, framed the incident as evidence that the war is reaching the bloc's frontier. He called the "barbaric strikes" at Yahodyn a sign of "Putin's terror 'knocking' directly on the doors of the EU and Nato," and repeated Kyiv's push for tougher sanctions against Moscow. "Putin needs to understand that his barbarism will be met with decisive action that increases the cost of war for him to an unacceptable level. This is the only way to stop him," Sybiha said.

In Poland, Prime Minister Donald Tusk convened an emergency meeting to weigh the developments along the shared border. He warned that the pattern of Russian behaviour was hardening into something Warsaw could no longer treat as exceptional, saying the escalation from the Russian side was becoming a reality.

Yahodyn drone strike, Boris Johnson Ukraine, Ukraine railway attack, Ukrzaliznytsia, Carl Bildt, David Petraeus, Poland border Russia, Andrii Sybiha

Click here to Read More
Previous Article
George Chuvalo, Canadian boxing icon, dies at 89
Next Article
Ryanair's O'Leary Refuses to Apologize for High-Fare Rapists Jibe

Related World Updates:

Are you sure? You want to delete this comment..! Remove Cancel

Comments (0)

    Leave a comment