Mass Russian Drone Barrage Batters Western Ukraine and Rail Line Near Polish Border
Russia has mounted what multiple reports describe as its largest drone attack of the war, sending hundreds of unmanned aircraft over western Ukraine, hitting energy sites, warehouses and rail targets including a passenger train locomotive just 2 km from Poland.
Ukraine’s rear areas are coming under intense pressure after what multiple reports describe as Russia’s biggest drone operation since the start of its full‑scale campaign, a 24‑hour barrage that drove unmanned aircraft right up to the Polish border.
Between 12 and 13 September, hundreds of second‑ and third‑generation Russian drones reportedly swarmed western Ukraine, using mesh communication technology linked to relay equipment along the Belarusian border, according to battlefield monitoring channels and pro‑Russian sources. Separate reporting says the attack involved nearly 1,000 Geran‑2 drones and Geran‑4 jet‑powered drones and lasted almost exactly 24 hours before only a few aircraft remained in Ukrainian airspace.
President Volodymyr Zelensky said that in just the past week Russia fired about 2,100 drones of various types at Ukraine, a significant part of them jet‑powered, along with almost 1,700 guided aerial bombs and 78 missiles of different classes. He said that during the latest waves, strikes hit energy infrastructure, Ukrainian Railways, businesses and ordinary apartment buildings, with Odesa attacked by both missiles and drones overnight and into the morning of 13 September. Local emergency services reported a fire at a warehouse in Odesa after a drone strike.
Rail links were a clear focus. Footage circulating online shows several recent Geran‑4 strikes on locomotives in Poltava, Mykolaiv, Odesa, Zaporizhzhia and Dnipropetrovsk regions. On 13 September, Ukrainian Railways said Russia hit the locomotive of a passenger train in Volyn region, just 2 km from the Polish border. A monitoring group had warned the train crew in advance about the threat, and the company reported no injuries.
There was also confusion about whether Russian drones had crossed into Poland. One widely shared clip claimed to show a Geran‑5 jet drone entering Polish airspace. A later clarification from Ukraine‑focused monitoring accounts said those claims were false: the drone struck the area of the Yahodyn border crossing in Volyn region and did not cross the border. They blamed earlier reports on unreliable Ukrainian monitoring channels that assumed the drone kept flying west after approaching the crossing.
On the ground, Russian sources boasted that gas stations along the M06 and M07 roads in western Ukraine were “wiped out” in the attack, suggesting a deliberate focus on fuel supply and civilian mobility. The Russian Defence Ministry said its overnight missile and drone strikes targeted a Nova Poshta warehouse in the village of Nerubaivske in Odesa region, which it claimed was used to store and distribute military equipment, as well as the “Usatove” 330 kV substation in the town of Usatove and the “Nova” 150 kV substation.
Ukrainian engineers are trying to close the gap. They have developed an air defence system based on the Stugna‑P anti‑tank missile system, adapted to engage slow‑moving aerial targets such as Russian Geran‑2 and Gerbera attack drones. Footage from Ukraine also shows a series of recent Geran‑4 jet‑drone strikes on locomotives across multiple regions, underlining the pressure on the country’s rail network.
Meanwhile, Russia’s drone campaign is being met with strikes on its own territory. Ukrainian forces say they hit the Slavyansk‑EKO oil refinery in the Krasnodar region town of Slavyansk‑na‑Kubani and the TANECO refinery in Nizhnekamsk, Tatarstan, overnight on 13 September, with fires reported at both sites. A Russian storage, preparation and launch site for strike drones in Millerovo, Rostov region, was also hit, and Ukraine’s General Staff confirmed that a 11 September strike damaged a refinery in Russia’s Saratov region.
Inside Russia, a separate 12 September attack on Taganrog reportedly destroyed a Pantsir‑S1 air defence system, burned a 1,000‑ton fuel tank at Taganrog Severny airfield and hit UAV producer Atlant Aero. A 4,000‑square‑metre production area caught fire and a warehouse containing finished Molniya drones was reportedly destroyed.
In western Ukraine, emergency repair work continues in many regions after the night‑time strikes, Zelensky said. For people living and working along Ukraine’s western transport and energy corridors, the combination of mass drone swarms, targeted hits on fuel and rail infrastructure, and strikes that come within walking distance of Poland’s border is turning what was once considered a relative rear area back into an active zone of attack.
Key signals now will be whether Russia continues to launch large‑scale swarms of Geran‑2 and Geran‑4 drones into western Ukraine, whether reports of destroyed fuel sites and gas stations along key roads are confirmed, and how quickly improvised systems like the Stugna‑P‑based air defence begin to affect the success rate of these strikes.
Sources
- OSINT