Russia has been ramping up its exploding drone strikes on Ukraine’s rail network, officials say, targeting trains, stations, and other infrastructure in a deadly new campaign.
A representative of Ukraine’s state-owned rail company told Business Insider that the surge in attacks coincides with Russia’s “dramatic increase” in long-range drone production. This has afforded Moscow more weapons for hunting down trains.
Russia has been carrying out attacks against Ukraine’s rail network since the early days of the war. However, it began increasing the frequency of strikes in early August, focusing on “disrupting critical connections,” Yulia Svyrydenko, Ukraine’s prime minister, said earlier this month.
Since August, Russia has launched nearly 300 strikes on the Ukrainian railway system, said Oleksii Kuleba, Ukraine’s deputy prime minister for restoration, on Sunday in his latest tally of attacks. Officials have said that targets include trains, stations, and other infrastructure.
Since the start of the war, 221 railway workers have been wounded and 37 have died while performing their duties by Russian strikes. They have also caused civilian casualties. With the increase in attacks, those numbers could spike. An October 4 strike on a train station left one person dead and 30 more injured.
The representative of Ukrzaliznytsia, Ukraine’s state-owned railway company, said their understanding is that Moscow’s goals are to sow panic among passengers and to disrupt the economy. The recent uptick in attacks has been linked to a rise in Russian drone production, they said.
“Previously, they simply did not have sufficient resources for a single combat drone, such as a Shahed, to hunt down a locomotive,” the railway representative told Business Insider. “Now they can afford to use Shaheds to hit individual locomotives rather than strategic targets.”
Neither Russia’s embassy in the US nor its defense ministry immediately responded to a request for comment from Business Insider on the strike campaign.
Russia has significantly scaled up its drone operations this year. The country now produces around 4,000 a month at its factories, and it has been able to attack Ukraine with hundreds of them in its nightly strikes. Western intelligence has warned this could eventually become thousands.
Russia has also notably expanded its drone bases and launch sites in recent months in a sign that it is investing heavily in cheap long-range strike capabilities.
In an October 4 social media post, Svyrydenko said that Moscow also uses missiles to “systematically” attack Ukraine’s rail network. “Alongside their strikes on energy facilities ahead of the winter season, Russia now seeks to sever the very arteries of life in Ukraine — the routes that carry people, enable medical evacuation, and deliver hope across our country,” she said.
Kuleba said in a statement on the Telegram messaging platform that Ukrzaliznytsia tends to restore infrastructure within just a few hours of attacks and usually gets operations going again later that day.
Russia’s new campaign against Ukraine’s rail network comes as part of the broader expansion of its drone attacks against the country. Over the past several months, it has regularly targeted cities and civilian infrastructure with hundreds of armed and decoy drones, the latter of which are designed to exhaust Kyiv’s already strained air defenses.
Ukraine, meanwhile, has ramped up its own strike campaign since early August, using long-range drones in attacks on Russian energy infrastructure, including oil refineries. The goal has been to disrupt a key source of revenue that fuels Moscow’s war efforts and apply pressure on the Kremlin.
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