A Russian drone attack on a station in Ukraine may have been aimed at a train carrying dignitaries including former British PM Boris Johnson, the country’s railways operator has said.
The attack hit a train at Yahodyn station, on the Polish border, shortly after the train carrying the former prime minister had left ahead of schedule.
Johnson had been returning from a major conference in Kyiv along with former Swedish prime minister Carl Bildt and a number of European security advisers.
According to a translation from Ukrainian, rail operator Ukrzaliznytsia said in a post on Telegram it was “quite possible” that the drone had been aimed at Johnson’s train.
The company said the train “had departed the station earlier than scheduled due to real-time adjustments to train timetables necessitated by the constant threat of Russian strikes”.
It added that former CIA director David Petraeus had been on a different train that was still at the station when the drone struck. No casualties have been reported.
In the wake of the attack, Johnson praised Ukrzaliznytsia staff and passengers as “absolutely heroic” and called for more support for Ukraine.
He said: “I don’t know what warped logic drove [Russian president Vladimir] Putin to blow up a stationary Ukrainian locomotive on the Polish border this morning.
“What we can say for sure is that this is the kind of random and senseless attack Ukrainians are enduring every day – even on civilian railways.”
He added: “When are we going to give them the air defences they need? Why won’t we unfreeze Putin’s cash and give it to Ukraine? There is more than €140 billion in a Belgian bank account – and about £10 billion in London. Britain could show a lead.”
Ukraine’s foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, wrote on X the attack was “Putin’s terror knocking directly on the doors of the EU and Nato. Russian barbarians are at your gate, dear partners”.
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, 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.”
The Polish prime minister, Donald Tusk, warned on Sunday that intensifying Russian attacks in Ukraine in the coming weeks could affect Poland, as he chaired an emergency meeting after the Russian drone attacks near the border.
“The coming weeks and months will be a period of very intensive actions on the Russian side,” he said, adding Poland “cannot rule out that this escalation will also affect our territory”.
He added that Poland had been tipped off by its security services, and by intelligence agencies from allied countries, that an attack such as this was likely. “We knew that the Russian plan would include an attempt to disrupt, paralyse, and perhaps even destroy Ukrainian border crossings,” Tusk said. – PA, additional reporting Guardian