A Russian strike has killed a Ukrainian railway worker at his post. Russian forces hit three Ukrzaliznytsia locomotives, two in Zaporizhzhia and one in Sumy Oblast, and one of the strikes killed an assistant driver who could not get clear in time, Ukrainian Railways board chairman Oleksandr Pertsovskyi reported on Facebook.
Pertsovskyi added that railway staff pull dozens of colleagues out of harm's way every week, but each death is an irreparable loss.
Trains became primary targets
Russia has turned Ukraine's trains into deliberate targets. It struck the railway about 1,200 times in 2025, more than the previous two years combined, shifting its aim from track and stations to the rolling stock itself, and has killed about 40 railway workers since 2022, Ukrzaliznytsia says.
Strikes on trains have at times averaged six a day. Russian fire damaged 209 locomotives, 239 passenger carriages, and 371 freight cars in 2025 and early 2026 alone, with the heaviest concentration near the front.
Railways shield crews under fire
To keep trains running, the company has hardened its staff protection. It has installed more than 800 mobile blast shelters at junctions and depots so crews can take cover within seconds of an alert, and it reroutes trains and reworks depot patterns to cut the time crews spend in the most dangerous areas.
Even so, the margin between evacuation and impact is narrow, as the Zaporizhzhia strike showed.
Company supports victim's family
Pertsovskyi said the circumstances of the strike are still being established and that Ukrzaliznytsia is giving the dead worker's family all the help it can. The railway keeps moving troops, weapons, displaced families, and soldiers on leave across the country, a role that makes it indispensable and the reason Russia keeps aiming at it.
