Ukraine’s national railroad made secret the exact schedules and routes of some intercity trains to make it more difficult for Russian kamikaze drones to attack them, an announcement to travelers by the national carrier Ukrzaliznytsia said on Wednesday.
The precise time of arrival and means by which passengers riding trains in Ukraine’s eastern Kharkiv will reach destinations region will be “limited access” information not published ahead of time, and bus or local, suburban train transport may be substituted for some legs of a trip without notice, the statement said.
The security measures will lengthen trip times and make arrival times less reliable, but the changes are necessary because past Russian long-range strikes on Ukrainian passenger trains depended on a usually punctual train reaching a particular point on the rail network at a predictable time, the message to rail travelers said.
“The enemy [Russian armed forces] is intensifying attacks on the railway, in particular on rolling stock… Punctuality and speed are important to us, but nothing is more important than safety. Therefore, please do not plan transfers ‘close to each other’ and allow additional time for possible delays for safety reasons,” the Ukrzalizniytsia warning said in part.
Three Russian Shahed kamikaze drones attacked a westbound passenger train in the eastern Kharkiv region during Wednesday’s early morning hours, with at least one robot aircraft striking a sleeping car, killing five passengers and hospitalizing two more.
One train car and the locomotive caught on fire, forcing all passengers – reportedly 286 people mostly women and children – into open fields in temperatures around 10 degrees below zero Celsius (+14°F). Two near-misses damaged other rolling stock but did not cause injuries.
Police forensics teams were working to establish victim identities with DNA testing of remains found in the smashed train car, the news platform censor.net reported.
A Russian Shahed drone usually carries 50-75 kg (110-165 lbs.) of high explosive, a charge sufficient to shatter into rubble at least one entire apartment in a concrete-and-steel building. Some Shahed drone warheads are also packed with ball bearings (functioning as buckshot) to enhance the weapon’s ability to inflict human casualties.
Oleksii Kuleba, Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister for Restoration of Ukraine, said of the strike to Kyiv reporters: “The attack on the passenger train is a direct act of Russian terror against civilians. No military purpose.”
Kremlin information platforms on Wednesday and Thursday made no reference to the attack.
In past statements, Russian Federation spokespersons have claimed that Russian forces only attack military targets.
Ukraine’s railroad systems are the country’s most important public transportation by a significant margin, moving about 28 million passengers in 2025, averaging 75,000–80,000 per day for long-distance travel, and another 32-40 million passengers on local trains.
The state-run company is mostly popular with travelers for its solid on-time record, despite wartime pressures, and for relatively low ticket prices.
The Ukrzalizniytsia statement singled out long-distance travelers needing to make connections with flights outside Ukraine as most threatened by delays because actual arrival times would depend on train routes, potential unscheduled stops and possible substitute legs by bus or local train that would be announced to passengers only after the long-distance train first started its trip.
Since the full-scale Russian invasion, ridership on Ukrainian trains to and from adjacent countries of Poland, Hungary, Romania and Moldova has rocketed because Russian Air Force targeting of civilian aircraft ended direct air travel to and from Ukraine.
The routes most affected by unpredictable delays would be for trains moving through Ukraine’s Kharkiv, Sumy, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions to other destinations, the announcement said.
“Please take this into account when planning your travels,” the statement warned.
In a Jan. 27 public notice, the Ukrainian national railroad management announced it had deployed Ukrzalizniytsia heated train cars to the Polish city of Chelm, a once-remote switching station in eastern Poland but now a heavily-used transfer point for passenger train traffic moving between Kyiv and Warsaw.
In the past passengers waiting for connections had little option but park benches on an open train platform, sometimes in frigid temperatures in winter. The heated cars have device charging ports and hot water for tea and coffee.
Eight stations in Ukraine also have had heated stationary trains deployed to them to give cover to travelers waiting to make transfers, the statement said.
Russian long-range strikes have sent kamikaze drones and missiles against Ukrainian homes and businesses almost continually since Kremlin invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, but attacks against moving trains have been relatively uncommon.
Before Tuesday, the worst Russian drone attack against Ukrainian railroad passengers while traveling was on Oct. 4 with Shahed kamikaze drones hitting two passenger trains in the northern Sumy region, one local and one long-distance, killing one civilian and injuring at least 30.
Ukrainian rail stations have been a priority Russian target for most of the war, with attacks concentrating on stations nearer the front lines and on major switching hubs.
The bloodiest Russian attack on Ukrainian rail travelers took place on April 22, 2022, when a Tochka-U surface-to-surface missile (NATO: SS-21 “Scarab”) scored a direct hit on the main rail station of the eastern city of Kramatorsk which, at the time, was packed with 1,000-4,000 civilians trying to escape from advancing Russian ground forces.
The warhead armed with cluster munitions killed 63 civilians including 9 children and wounded over 150, including 34 children.
Russian Shahed drones, on Dec. 5–6, 2025, targeted and heavily damaged the major switching node Fastiv, in the southern Kyiv region, to snarl the movement of nearly two hundred long-distance and local trains moving through daily.
The strikes demolished the station building, adjacent areas, and related infrastructure, and a suburban electric train depot also was hit, destroying 27 commuter/suburban train carriages. Railroad management declared the station not reparable and warned travelers that trains moving through the area would face “possible delays of 1–2 hours, which may occur depending on the traffic intensity.”