Russian attack on five train stations in Ukraine questions the viability of the rail network

Remains one of the great mysteries of the war in ukraine: why Russia has not tried to neutralize the extensive Ukrainian railway network? The same ones that have served to evacuate millions of civilians of the areas hardest hit by the conflict or to distribute 80,000 tons of humanitarian aid, but also to supply the ukrainian army or transport their soldiers to the vicinity of the front. “We don’t understand the logic of this war. Or why they don’t attack the railway lines or why they bomb nurseries in Mariupol“, the head of the Lviv station, Roman Senishyn, told this newspaper at the end of March. “We believe that the trains they are a strategic objective and we are worried that sooner or later they will end up attacking them”.

That sooner or later has had a turning point this Monday. Russia has bombed five railway stations in it hub and the west of the country in a succession of attacks that occurred within an hour, according to local authorities. Although there are not too many details about it, the Ukrainian prosecutor’s office assures that five people have died and 18 others have been injured in the central region of Vinnyist. The rest of the missiles have been primed with the regions of Rivne, Kyiv and Lviv.

All of them are currently far from the front, which suggests that Russia is trying to disrupt the shipment of supplies to the Ukrainian Army in the east and south of the country, where the Kremlin’s offensive is concentrated. There is another more subliminal interpretation, since both the United States Secretary of State, Tony Blinken, and his defense counterpart, Lloyd Austin, used the Ukrainian trains on Sunday to travel to kyiv and meet with President Volodímir Zelensky.

The bombing of critical infrastructures during the day was completed with the attacks on an oil refinery in Kremenchuk, in central Ukraine, as well as several fuel tanks in its vicinity, according to the Russian Defense Ministry. Those of this Monday are not the first attacks against the country’s train stations. The bloodiest occurred on April 8 in Kramatorsk, a city in the Donetsk region. A total of 59 people, including seven children and several women, died in the attack while waiting on the platforms.

None of this has so far prevented the bulk of the Ukrainian railway routes, a country with more than 20,000 kilometers of railway lines, from continuing to operate. It is still possible to travel from Lviv to Odessa (southwest) or Kharkiv (northeast), a city, the latter, which has not stopped being regularly bombed since the invasion began on February 24. And although the trains no longer reach the areas completely occupied by Putin’s military – like the city of Mariupolwhich was isolated three days after the start of the offensive with the bombing of the neighboring junction of Volnovakha— have not stopped shooting to the rest of the country.

“These are the arteries of our economy. No one can transport as many things as we can,” Senishyn, the head of the Lviv station, said proudly. Some of his peers have gone on to operate from underground bunkers to protect themselves from the bombs, like the person in charge of the network in Kharkov, who came to celebrate his birthday from there. Despite precautions, at least 71 workers of the state companywhich employs more than 230,000 people, have been killed since the start of the conflict, according to data from early April.

“Neither stations nor railway lines have so far been among the main Russian targets, but some have been damaged by bombing. In the Kharkov region and, in general, in the entire northeast, there are many destroyed tracks and also some stations”, Senishyn added from his modest office in Lviv. What the Ukrainians did do at the beginning of the war was to destroy all the railway connections with Russia and Belarus to prevent them from being used to supply the invading troops.