A passenger train travelling from Kyiv to Warsaw was hit by a Russian drone two kilometres from the Polish border, in an attack that Ukraine’s foreign minister described as “Putin’s terror knocking directly on the doors of the EU and Nato”.
At least six people were killed and more than ۴۰ injured in overnight attacks across Ukraine, which involved more than ۴۵۰ drones and missiles launched by Russia. Ukraine’s air force said that it intercepted ۴۰۵ drones and four missiles.
Western Ukraine, which is typically quieter than Kyiv or the eastern frontline zones, was particularly badly hit.
The strikes prompted air raid warnings in Poland, which shares a border with western Ukraine.
Ukrainian and Polish authorities said a truck less than one kilometre from the Dorohusk-Yahodyn border crossing between the two countries was also hit.
Reuters reported that Russia’s defence ministry said it had targeted infrastructure that facilitated military cargoes from Europe into Ukraine.
Katerina Sergatskova, director of Daily Humanity, an organisation that provides training to people working in high-risk environments, was travelling on the Warsaw-bound train.
She said passengers were told to evacuate at around ۹am as the train approached the Polish border, having already been off-boarded for two hours in the middle of the night. “At this point, the mood was different, we were asked to move very fast,” she said. “Then I heard the first drone.”
Sergatskova added: “Seeing and hearing Shahed [drones] just a few hundred meters from the border is a very unpleasant experience.”
No casualties were reported on the train. Three people were killed in the eastern Donetsk region, while one person, a ۷۱-year-old woman, was killed in the southern Mykolaiv region.
Andrii Sybiha, Ukraine’s foreign minister, said the Russian strikes were “not just a continuation of its attacks on our state borders”.
“This is Putin’s terror knocking directly on the doors of the EU and Nato. Russian barbarians are at your gate, dear partners,” he wrote on X.
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, wrote on Telegram: “Ukrainians are fighting every day to prevent these strikes from spreading further into Europe, giving their lives and preventing the aggression from expanding.”
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Poland’s foreign minister, Radosław Sikorski, who visited Kyiv this week, said on X after Sunday morning’s attack: “Putin is escalating.”
The Polish interior minister, Marcin Kierwiński, said: “We treat these events with the utmost seriousness. The situation is being monitored continuously. Russia is the enemy of the free world.”
Ukraine and Russia have increased attacks on critical infrastructure in each other’s countries as long-range drones and missiles take the war further away from the frontlines.
The US president, Donald Trump, said on Sunday that Zelenskyy should “stop knocking out diesel fuel in Russia” because it was causing shortages.
“Let him go after targets, but not diesel fuel, because he’s causing a shortage of diesel,” Trump said, adding that shortages were caused by the Russia-Ukraine war rather than the US war in the Middle East.
In Lithuania, authorities briefly closed the airport in Vilnius, the capital, after a perceived drone sighting. Nato summoned at least one fighter jet in response to the alert, which turned out to be a flock of birds. The airport re-opened within ۴۰ minutes, according to Lithuanian authorities.
