A Russian drone has hit a train near the Ukraine-Poland border shortly after former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and top European security officials had passed through.
No casualties were reported after the strike at Yahodyn, which hit the train’s engine. All the passengers had been evacuated, Ukrainian authorities said.
Johnson and other European national security advisers, including the UK’s Jonathan Powell, had passed along the same line on a different train on their way back from a conference in Kyiv.
Russia said it had struck “railway infrastructure” in western Ukraine, but Ukraine’s state railway company Ukrzaliznytsia said that “quite possibly, the target of this drone could have been the diplomatic train”.
Former CIA chief David Petraeus, who had been on board another train at Yahodyn station at the time of the strike, said the incident was “terrifying”.
In an interview with the New York Times, Petraeus said: “This is the act of a truly barbaric leader trying to terrorize Ukrainian civilians.”
In a statement, Ukrzaliznytsia said the diplomatic train “had left the station earlier than expected because of the timetable change… due to constant threats of Russian strikes”.
It also said an evacuation order for passengers on the hit train had been given “just 15 minutes” before the strike by a Russian jet-propelled drone.