Russian Strike on Ukraine Train ‘Meant to Scare’ West

“It is clearly meant to scare Western countries from supporting Ukraine, from going to Ukraine to show support,” foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said, urging Keiv’s backers to do “the opposite.”

Kallas’ remarks came a day after Poland and Ukraine denounced Russian strikes close to the Polish border that hit a Warsaw-bound train near a frontier checkpoint just after another train carrying several EU officials and British ex-PM Boris Johnson passed through.

Ukraine’s rail operator said Johnson and former CIA director David Petraeus, who were in Kiev for the annual Yalta European Strategy forum, had been traveling on two separate trains around the time the Warsaw-bound locomotive was hit on Sept. 13.

Petraeus told the New York Times in a telephone interview that he could hear Russian drones above followed by an explosion, prompting passengers to be quickly evacuated.

“For those who have not been under fire, this was terrifying. This is the act of a truly barbaric leader trying to terrorize Ukrainian civilians,” he added.

Johnson, who was traveling with several EU officials in a separate train, condemned the attack in a post on X.

“I don’t know what warped logic drove Putin to blow up a stationary Ukrainian locomotive on the Polish border,” he said.

“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.”

Poland and Ukraine said a Kiev-Warsaw passenger train was struck just two kilometers from the Polish border, but reported no casualties.

Warsaw has been one of Kiev’s main allies and, with Ukrainian airspace closed, trains to Poland have been one of the main routes out of the war-torn country, used by refugees.

The strikes came as U.S. President Donald Trump called on Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky to halt attacks on Russian refineries, saying it was causing a shortage of diesel fuel and “there are plenty of other targets.”

Ukraine has increasingly targeted Russian oil refineries in a bid to hurt Russia’s war effort.

Zelensky said Moscow “deliberately” struck the locomotive.

“It is precisely to prevent these strikes from spreading further into Europe that Ukrainian men and women fight every day, give their lives, and do not allow the aggression to expand,” Zelensky said.

Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk chaired an emergency meeting in Warsaw following the strikes, warning he expected Russia to escalate the war “in the coming weeks.”

Speaking in Kiev, Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said the “escalation” should lead to allies to “double” their support for Ukraine.