Russia attacked rail installations in three different regions of Ukraine on Thursday night and Friday morning, with the country’s defense minister vowing to intensify strikes aimed at slowing the flow of much-needed U.S. weapons and equipment to the front lines.
According to the Ukrainian military and local officials, at least 31 civilians were injured and six died in the attack. Three of the dead were railway workers killed during strikes in the Donetsk region. Thirteen passengers on a regional train were injured when a missile hit a train station in Balaklia, a railway hub in the Kharkiv region. Russia also attacked a railway facility in the Cherkasy region, but no casualties were reported.
With an estimated 12,000 miles of track and 230,000 employees, Ukrainian Railways played a vital role in the war, evacuating civilians from frontline areas, transporting everything from food to humanitarian aid across the country, and carefully ferrying Western allies Provide heavy weapon guards and hidden supply lines.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu promised to target Western weapons once they arrive in Ukraine. “We will intensify our attacks on Western weapons logistics centers and storage bases,” he said in a speech at the Defense Ministry on Tuesday.
Speaking in Berlin, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg welcomed the new aid recently announced by the United States and other allies in Ukraine, stressing the need for swift action: “It is now our responsibility to turn these commitments into real aid weapons and ammunition. And do it as quickly as possible,” he said.
Ukrainian forces want to see new weapons arriving on the front lines as soon as possible as they are engaged in a fierce conflict and struggling to hold their own in multiple locations. Russian troops have captured a series of villages west of Avdievka in the Donetsk region, but their next big target in that direction, the city of Pokrovsk, is still 18 miles away.
The pressure is even greater in the small but strategically located town of Chasiv Yar. In March, Russia stepped up its efforts to seize the town, which sits on a hill about five miles west of Bahmut. Its power has reached the eastern suburbs. Capturing the town would help Russia launch further offensive operations against large cities such as Kostyantinivka, Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, which are home to the majority of the population of the Ukrainian-controlled Donbas region center.
Meanwhile, in the northeastern Kharkiv Oblast and Sumy regions near the Russian border, guided aerial bomb attacks hit two villages on Friday morning, killing one woman and killing several others, local authorities and media reported. Injured, including at least three children.
