Russian Drone Hits Ukrainian Passenger Train Near Poland as Boris Johnson Travels Same Route by Rail
A Russian drone struck a passenger train in Ukraine’s Volyn region near the Polish border while a separate chartered train carrying Boris Johnson, senior German advisers, a German MP and European diplomats was traveling the same Kyiv–Poland route, highlighting how Ukraine’s rail lifeline now runs through an active strike zone on NATO’s doorstep.
A Russian drone strike on a passenger train in western Ukraine has underlined how close the war is running to NATO territory and to visiting Western officials who rely on the same tracks.
President Volodymyr Zelensky said on 13 September that Russia launched about 2,100 drones at Ukraine this week, many of them jet‑powered Shaheds, along with nearly 1,700 guided bombs and 78 missiles. He said overnight and morning attacks hit energy facilities, the state railway operator Ukrzaliznytsia, businesses and homes across several western regions. Near the Polish border in Volyn, he said, a Russian drone strike burned a train.
German outlet Der Spiegel reported that among those traveling by rail on the same corridor from Kyiv to Poland were former UK prime minister Boris Johnson, advisers to German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Bundestag member Robin Wagener of the Greens and European diplomats. They were returning from the YES security conference in Kyiv.
A separate account said these officials were on a chartered night train that was stopped and partially evacuated at about 05:00 after a Russian drone hit the locomotive of another passenger train on the same route near the Polish border. An all‑clear was later given and their train continued. There were no reports that the visiting officials were harmed.
For Ukrainians, the attack shows again that civilian rail travel is exposed. With airspace closed and highways under threat, long‑distance trains are a basic way to move across the country. A strike on a locomotive on the Kyiv–Poland line turns a routine journey into a direct risk for passengers with no military role.
For Western delegations, the incident underlines that reaching Kyiv by rail depends on infrastructure that Russia is actively hitting. Train crews and border staff now work on lines where a drone can appear at almost any point, including stretches that run within sight of European Union border posts.
Poland’s Operational Command described Russia’s overnight attack on Ukraine as a “real and close” threat. It said Russian drones operated and struck targets just several to a dozen kilometers from Poland’s border, prompting Polish military aircraft to deploy. Air raid sirens sounded in six districts, and border checks were temporarily suspended overnight. A drone reportedly hit a truck around 800 meters from the border, though Polish officials did not immediately confirm that detail.
The Volyn strike fits into Russia’s wider effort to damage Ukraine’s energy system and transport network while showing that almost any part of the country can be hit. Targeting Ukrzaliznytsia infrastructure close to a NATO border also signals to Western governments that the rail routes they use to visit and support Kyiv run through areas Moscow is prepared to attack.
What happens next will depend on whether Poland changes its air defense posture along the border, whether NATO states offer more direct help to shield Ukraine’s western rail and energy infrastructure, and whether visiting delegations alter how they travel to Kyiv. Any formal protest from Poland or the EU over the proximity of Russian strikes would be one sign that alliance capitals see their own security line being tested.
Sources
- OSINT