Russia targets Ukraine’s railways, with over 800 attacks recorded this year
Ukraine has recorded a threefold increase in attacks on its railway system since July 2025, as Moscow intensifies efforts to destroy one of Kyiv’s key logistical and transport systems.
Oleksii Kuleba, a deputy prime minister with responsibility for infrastructure, stated that since the start of 2025, there have been 800 attacks on the network, causing damage totaling $1 billion and affecting more than 3,000 railway objects.
“If you compare just the last three months, attacks have increased three times over,” Kuleba said. "What we have seen in these escalating attacks is that they are going after trains, especially trying to kill the drivers.”
Critical Importance of the Rail Network
Given that no civilian airports have been operational since Russia’s full-scale invasion, the railways are critical for the country’s operations:
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Logistics: The rail network carries more than 63% of the country’s freight, including vital grain shipments.
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Travel: It handles 37% of passenger traffic, and most people, including visiting world leaders, travel in and out of the country by train.
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Military Support: Military assistance from foreign countries often arrives via the rail network.
Escalation and Tactics
Oleksandr Pertsovskyi, the head of the Ukrainian state railway, Ukrzaliznytsia, noted that the enemy forces' approach has changed. “Now, as they have very precise Shahed drones, they are targeting individual locomotives.”
The main railway station building in Lozova, in the Kharkiv region—a major junction connecting to Dnipro, Sloviansk, Poltava, and Kharkiv—was badly damaged in a recent drone strike. Station head Tetyana Tkachenko confirmed that the strike, which occurred at 2:44 am, was clearly targeting the station and five trains that were present at the time. The lines are used for passenger traffic, freight, and the evacuation of wounded soldiers from the eastern front.
Defensive Measures and Future Threat
Efforts to protect the network include equipping trains with electronic systems to counter drone strikes and training dedicated air defense teams from among railway staff. Air raid sirens require all operations to stop and trains to be moved to the nearest station so people can evacuate.
Kuleba identified Russia's three main objectives:
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Destroying Ukraine’s logistics in the south to prevent the movement of goods to seaports.
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Disrupting rail traffic close to the frontlines in regions such as Chernihiv and Sumy.
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"Destroying everything" in the Donbas, Ukraine’s industrial eastern heartland (Donetsk and Luhansk regions).
While tracks can often be repaired quickly, damage to rolling stock is a more worrying issue. Serhii Beskrestnov, a Ukrainian military expert, warned that as Russian drone technology and range increase, the railways become more vulnerable. "If the Russians keep hitting diesel and electric locomotives, the time will come very soon when the track will still be intact but we’ll have nothing left to run on it,” Beskrestnov said.
