A senior Ukrainian security source told AFP on Friday that Russia had increased attacks on railway infrastructure with the aim of disrupting movement of military cargo that includes Western aid.
Russian forces have firepower and manpower advantages over Ukrainian forces across the front line and Kyiv has warned that fighting will be especially difficult over the coming weeks.
The uptick in deadly attacks is intended to destroy train facilities and "paralyse deliveries and movement of military cargo" ahead of a planned Russian offensive, the source said.
"These are standard steps ahead of an offensive," they added.
Regional officials and Ukrainian railway operator Ukrzaliznytsia have reported an uptick in deadly strikes on railway facilities.
Three railway employees were killed and four more were wounded, the company said, during a Russian missile attack on the eastern Donetsk region.
Ten civilians were also wounded on Thursday when Russian forces attacked railway facilities in Balakliya the Kharkiv region.
"We see strikes related to railway logistics, and they hit mostly civilian facilities," Oleksandr Pertsovsky, the head of passenger transportation at Ukrzaliznytsia, told AFP.
The Russian defence ministry said Friday its forces had hit "Western weapons and military equipment" being transported by railway one day earlier in the Donetsk region, and also targeted railway facilities in the Kharkiv region.
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Comments (2)
Russian destroying Ukraine rail systems just shoots Russia in the foot as far as having any future prospect of rail based trade with the EU. Most of the EU is on 'standard gauge' 1435-mm wide tracks. Russia uses 1520-mm broad-gauge railway.
Previously with its support of dual gauge and its 3 massive / rapid bogie (wheel) swap stations, Ukraine served as a means for Russian gauge rail cars to travel on to Romania, Moldova, Poland, Hungary and Slovakia. Russia itself only had that capability at 2 Chinese and one North Korea border (also one at Poland's borders with Kaliningrad and Belarus).
From a 26/2/24 Center for Eastern Studies report: "Ukraine’s current priorities include a plan to extend standard-gauge railways (that is, the 1435-mm gauge used in the vast majority of the EU, as opposed to the 1520-mm broad-gauge railway which predominates in Russia and the post-Soviet states)"
As russia destroys Ukraine's 1520-mm gauged railways / gauge switching stations these will be replaced with the the EU's 1435-mm gauge. Henceforth future russian sourced or bound rail cargo (assuming relations with EU ever improve) would have to be unloaded / reloaded at much greater costs and delay to transiting through Ukraine to its adjoining nations.
It’s time to take the Kerch Bridge totally out.