A Russian drone strike that hit a train engine near the Poland-Ukraine border may have targeted a diplomatic train carrying former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and former CIA Director David Petraeus, according to Ukrainian Railways. The state-owned rail operator revealed that the train carrying Johnson, Petraeus, and several European security advisers had passed through the border crossing shortly before the drone strike occurred. The company noted that the diplomatic train departed earlier than planned due to a real-time schedule review prompted by ongoing Russian strike threats.
The strike on the border railway infrastructure was part of a massive overnight barrage across Ukraine, involving more than 450 Russian drones and missiles. The attack killed at least six people and injured over 40 nationwide. Ukraine's air force reported intercepting 405 drones and four missiles, with western Ukraine—typically a quieter region—bearing a significant portion of the bombardment.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha condemned the escalation, calling it "Putin's terror knocking directly on the doors of the EU and Nato." He warned Western allies on social media that "Russian barbarians are at your gate, dear partners." President Volodymyr Zelenskyy added on Telegram that Ukrainians are giving their lives daily to prevent these strikes from expanding further into Europe.
In Poland, where the proximity of the attacks triggered air-raid warnings, authorities reported that a lorry was also struck less than a kilometer from the Dorohusk-Yahodyn border crossing. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk chaired an emergency meeting and warned that intensified Russian actions in the coming weeks and months could affect Polish territory. Tusk disclosed that Polish and allied intelligence services had previously warned of attempts to "disrupt, paralyse, and perhaps even destroy Ukrainian border crossings." Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski remarked that "Putin is escalating," while Interior Minister Marcin Kierwiński stated that Poland is monitoring the situation continuously, calling Russia "the enemy of the free world."
Eyewitnesses near the border described moments of panic and fast evacuations. Katerina Sergatskova, director of the training organization Daily Humanity, was on a Warsaw-bound train and recalled being told to evacuate quickly around 9:00 AM. "Seeing and hearing Shahed [drones] just a few hundred metres from the border is a very unpleasant experience," she said, though no casualties were reported on her train.
An anonymous British economist traveling from Kyiv to Chelm, Poland, recounted spending 10 hours at the border and evacuating three times. During the final evacuation, a missile struck and destroyed a locomotive directly ahead of their train. The economist praised the "timely and disciplined" response of the railway staff, who directed passengers to hide in bushes near a lake. A mother and her eight-year-old son in the same compartment, who had traveled monthly between Kyiv and Warsaw since 2022, noted they had never faced an evacuation or attack before, prompting the economist to call the incident "clearly an escalation."
Boris Johnson reacted to the strike on X, writing: "I don’t know what warped logic drove Putin to blow up a stationary Ukrainian locomotive on the Polish border this morning. What we can say for sure is that this is the kind of random and senseless attack Ukrainians are enduring every day – even on civilian railways."
Meanwhile, Russia’s Defense Ministry claimed responsibility for targeting "railway infrastructure in the western regions of Ukraine," asserting the lines were being used to transport military cargo from European countries. Elsewhere in Ukraine, casualties included three people killed in the eastern Donetsk region and a 71-year-old woman killed in southern Mykolaiv.
The escalating strikes on critical infrastructure have drawn international commentary. US President Donald Trump commented on Sunday that Zelenskyy should "stop knocking out diesel fuel in Russia" due to shortages. In a separate incident, Lithuanian authorities briefly closed the Vilnius airport and scrambled a NATO fighter jet over a suspected drone sighting, which was later determined to be a flock of birds.
