Broader overnight attacks with more than 450 drones and missiles kill six
A Russian drone struck a passenger train traveling from Kyiv to Warsaw about two kilometers from the Polish border early Sunday, Ukrainian and Polish authorities said. No casualties were reported on the train. The strike was part of an overnight wave of Russian attacks across Ukraine. Officials said those attacks involved more than 450 drones and missiles launched by Russia, killed at least six people and injured more than 40.
Katerina Sergatskova, director of Daily Humanity, an organization that provides training for people working in high-risk environments, was on the Warsaw-bound train. She told The Guardian that passengers had been ordered off the train for two hours during the night and were told to evacuate again at around 9 a.m. as the train approached the border. “At this point, the mood was different, we were asked to move very fast,” Sergatskova said. “Then I heard the first drone.” She added: “Seeing and hearing Shahed [drones] just a few hundred meters from the border is a very unpleasant experience.”
Firefighters sprayed water on a burning carriage after the strike, according to a photograph distributed by Ukraine’s State Emergency Service via Reuters. Ukrainian and Polish authorities said a truck less than one kilometer from the Dorohusk-Yahodyn border crossing between the two countries was also hit in the same wave of strikes.
Three people were killed in the eastern Donetsk region and a 71-year-old woman was killed in the southern Mykolaiv region, according to Ukrainian officials. Ukraine’s air force said it intercepted 405 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 Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha wrote on X that the Russian strikes were “not just a continuation of its attacks on our state borders.” He added: “This is Putin’s terror knocking directly on the doors of the EU and Nato. Russian barbarians are at your gate, dear partners.”
Ukrainian 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.”
Poland’s foreign minister, Radosław Sikorski, who visited Kyiv this week, wrote on X after Sunday morning’s attack: “Putin is escalating.” 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.”
Reuters reported that Russia’s defense ministry said it had targeted infrastructure that facilitated military cargoes from Europe into Ukraine.
The overnight strikes came as U.S. President Donald Trump told Zelenskyy on Sunday to stop Ukrainian strikes on Russian diesel-fuel targets. “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 U.S. 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 Lithuanian authorities later determined was a flock of birds. The airport reopened within 40 minutes, according to Lithuanian authorities.