EU Warns of Escalation After Strike Near Poland’s Border

A Russian drone hit a Warsaw-bound locomotive two kilometers from the Polish border on Sunday, minutes after a train carrying Western officials left the same station. The EU’s top diplomat Kaja Kallas said Monday that the strike was meant to “scare” Kyiv’s backers.

Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt, and security advisers from several EU member states had left Yahodyn by train minutes earlier. They were returning from the Yalta European Strategy forum, which closed in Kyiv on September 12. Former CIA Director David Petraeus waited aboard a second train at the station.

I don’t know what warped logic drove 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. So far Putin…

— Boris Johnson (@BorisJohnson) September 13, 2026

Ukrainian rail operator Ukrzaliznytsia evacuated the passengers, and the strike caused no casualties. The operator said it was “highly probable” that the intended target was the diplomatic train, which had left Yahodyn ahead of schedule. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia struck the locomotive “deliberately.”

“It is clearly meant to scare Western countries from supporting Ukraine,” EU foreign policy chief Kallas said in Rovaniemi, urging Kyiv’s backers to do “the opposite.” Johnson said he did not know “what warped logic drove Putin to blow up a stationary Ukrainian locomotive on the Polish border.”

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said he expected Russia to escalate “in the coming weeks.” Warsaw could not rule out that the escalation would reach Polish territory, he added. Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski called the strike an “escalation” and put it closer still, “just a few hundred meters from the Polish border.” He urged Kyiv’s allies to “double” their support. A second drone hit a truck near the border the same day, briefly closing the crossing.

Russia said it targeted “railway infrastructure used to transport military cargo” from European countries. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiha said President Vladimir Putin is waging a de facto war on Europe. Russian “terror is literally knocking at the door of the European Union and NATO,” he said.

The strike shows how close Russia can bring a NATO security crisis without ever crossing into alliance territory. Rail infrastructure within sight of Poland is also one of Kyiv’s main supply corridors, and Moscow hit it on the day Western officials were riding through. Warsaw now warns about spillover in plainer language each time. Continued strikes along the frontier would leave the war inside Ukraine and the security of NATO’s eastern flank as a single question. (AFP+EIR)