Fear and disruption for Ukraine's rail passengers as Russia escalates drone attacks

ByPaul Adams diplomatic correspondent, Reporting fromin Kyiv.

Key points

• Yuliia Ponomarenko, 27, a marketing specialist from Kharkiv, discovered her journey to Warsaw last month suddenly interrupted just short of the Ukraine-Poland frontier.
• In September alone, 5, 831 trains had to be evacuated due to Russian drone attacks, state owned railway operator Ukrzaliznytsia informed AFP news agency on Monday.
• Ukraine's railways have kept the country running since Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022.
• Of the 521 locomotives hit since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion, almost 60% have been this year, according to statistics published by the business.
• Each drone had a 100km (62-mile) circle around it.

Ukraine's railways have kept the country running since Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022. But attacks are intensifying, with more than half of all strikes on locomotives since then occurring this year alone, according to the state-owned operator.

The border guards started running around and shouting Run! Obtain out of the carriages! There's shelling!

Meanwhile, a Russian drone had just hit a locomotive near the same border, and a special train carrying former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and other European dignitaries, had passed through minutes before.

Passengers on Yuliia's train were kept waiting for six hours while the fire up ahead was put out and the line cleared, she notes: "We were really lucky that we were delayed a little and it wasn't our train."

As air raid alerts trigger emergency evacuations far from the battlegrounds of the east, she is among an increasing number of Ukrainian passengers facing disruption and long delays.

In September alone, 5, 831 trains had to be evacuated due to Russian drone attacks, state owned railway operator Ukrzaliznytsia informed AFP news agency on Monday. This meant on average each day, 205 trains were halted.

It appears to be part of a wider assault on Ukraine's infrastructure, with two bridges attacked in Kyiv previously few days and passengers of a metro train caught up in one of the strikes. Seventeen-year-old Anastasiia Ryvbalchenko has additionally experienced a narrow escape.

She and her fellow passengers were forced to leave their train at 4am, towards the end of a long of a journey from Odesa to Kirovohrad on 16 September.

"On my way to Odesa, there had been a lot of evacuations and now on my way back it was happening again, " she notes. "I was already thinking that if there was another evacuation, I just couldn't take it any more."

As passengers waited in the dark, a drone struck nearby, an hour and a half afterwards.

"There was an extremely loud explosion and everyone started running into the woods, " she remarked.

It is not clear what the target was, and in this case the train was not damaged, but with further explosions lighting up the night sky, Anastasiia decided not to linger, continuing her journey on foot before being picked up by her parents. "I'm not going to travel by train anymore, " she notes.

Anastassia's journey was more dramatic than most, but delays – some brief, others that last for hours – are now commonplace.

Since Russian drones first began attacking moving passenger trains towards the end of 2025, the routine for passengers has become increasingly familiar: leave the train, scroll Telegram channels for updates on drone and missile launches, send messages to warn friends and family that the train is delayed.

For a railway firm proud of its record for punctuality, this year's disrupted schedule is posing a major challenge.

"We used to say that that during times of war we performed better than some railways in Europe in regular times, "the head of rail operator Ukrzaliznytsia, Oleksandr Pertsovskyi, informed us.

"But now the life of our passengers and crew members is the utmost priority."

Russia's defence ministry denies targeting Ukrainian civilians and notes its attacks on railways target the infrastructure employed to transport military personnel and equipment.

For context, the dangers are particularly real. Attacks on Ukrzaliznytsia's rolling stock and stations have risen sharply.

Of the 521 locomotives hit since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion, almost 60% have been this year, according to statistics published by the business. Overall attacks on railway facilities have risen from 1, 206 in 2025 to 1, 700 so far this year.

"The latest wave of escalation and real war with railways is becoming extremely intense, " remarked Pertsovskyi.

"It's a combination of the deadly force of their shahed drones and precision that they achieve with cameras and mesh networks so they can hit moving targets."

According to Pertsovskyi, some of Russia's most recent drones are equipped with AI tools and image recognition. Ukraine is understandably cagey regarding how it goes concerning confronting this increasingly sophisticated threat, but electronic methods to disrupt the drones' connectivity are high on the list. "Unfortunately, this is always a cat-and-mouse game, " he remarked. Ukraine's prized steel industry left in ruins by Russian missile campaign.

Meanwhile, a four-minute warning isn't enough: Russia's new relentless missile tactics exhaust Kyiv residents.

We were given rare access to an underground bunker in Kyiv, dubbed – appropriately enough – the "Iron Command Centre", where railway staff monitor threats in real time.

On one massive video screen, colour-coded passenger and freight trains could be seen making their way along the arteries of Ukraine's vast railway network.

We watched as a red icon representing a drone appeared to loiter over Kyiv, practically above our heads at one point.

Each drone had a 100km (62-mile) circle around it. Any passenger trains inside the circle would already have been evacuated, with customers not allowed to reboard until the train was outside the circle and the drone was still moving away.

"Our mission is not to let our train or our crew members be in that immediate attack area, " Pertsovskyi remarked.

In practice, the company's precautions appear to have kept casualties low. Its figures for 2026 show that eight firm employees have been killed, six of them when a ballistic missile struck a locomotive depot in Kyiv.

During our visit to Iron Command, another air raid siren sounded in Kyiv. The city's main railway station, we were informed, was being evacuated.

On a afterwards visit to the busy station, we identified passengers waiting outside the main entrance or sheltering in underground passageways. Over the tannoy came news of steady stream of delays.

Everyone knows the coming months could be among the most tough yet.

With winter not far off, Ukrzaliznytsia is already figuring out how to accord with evacuations when the outside temperature can reach -20C or below and snow is lying heavy on the ground.

Along with international donors, the firm is preparing winter evacuation packs, mobile shelters and bus services in areas where evacuations become too frequent.

"We might be a slightly different railway, a reinvented railway, " Pertsovskyi remarked. "But we'll keep connecting the country, no matter what, be it winter, be it summer, no matter how hard the enemy hits us." Extra reporting by Anastasiia Levchenko.

Taken together, the developments around fear and disruption for Ukraine' s rail passengers as Russia escalates drone attacks point to a situation that is still moving, and the coming days should bring more clarity.