A Russian drone struck a passenger train at a station near the Ukraine-Poland border on Sunday, just minutes after a diplomatic delegation that included former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt had passed through the same station.
Ukraine's state rail operator, Ukrzaliznytsia, said the diplomatic train had departed the Yahodyn station ahead of schedule, and that it was quite possibly the intended target. Former CIA Director David Petraeus was on a separate train still at the station when the drone hit; he described the moment as deeply unsettling. No injuries were reported.
The strike, roughly two kilometers from the Polish border, came hours after a separate Russian drone set fire to a gas station at the same crossing — one of the main routes for Western military aid into Ukraine.
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NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said Monday in Brussels that the attack shows Russian President Vladimir Putin's desperation.
"The strike on a passenger train in Ukraine yesterday shows how desperate Putin has become," Rutte said. "He thinks that he can stop us from supporting Ukraine and that he can undermine our unity. He is wrong."
Rutte pledged to increase NATO's support for Ukraine and strengthen the alliance's defenses along its eastern border with Russia.
Meanwhile on Monday, Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy endorsed an end to strikes on infrastructure.
"There is now a strong U.S. proposal for a mutual halt to strikes on critical infrastructure. If this can become the first de-escalatory step — a step toward ending Russian strikes on our critical infrastructure and our strikes in response — then Ukraine is ready to support de-escalation," he said.
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Poland is responding with a buildup of its own. Prime Minister Donald Tusk said his government would add security along its entire border with Ukraine and warned that Russian escalation could reach Polish territory in the coming weeks. Polish officials said a CIA briefing last week warned that Moscow is preparing to intensify sabotage operations inside European countries.
Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said Sunday that Russia's campaign against Europe has moved well past disinformation and espionage, pointing to arson incidents in Poland, an attempted train derailment there and an attack on the Leipzig airport as part of the same pattern.
