Four people were killed and multiple trains were derailed in separate attacks on Russian railway lines over the weekend, authorities said, as a Ukrainian military intelligence unit claimed responsibility for two of the incidents.
An explosive device detonated on a section of track in Russia’s western Oryol region late Saturday, Oryol Governor Andrei Klychkov said, and authorities reported three members of the Russian National Guard killed in the incidents. Early Sunday, two separate derailments in the western Leningrad region left a train driver dead and disrupted railway traffic, Leningrad Governor Alexander Drozdenko said on the Telegram messaging service.
Drozdenko said recovery efforts were under way after a single diesel locomotive derailed near Semrino station in the Gatchina district; the driver was trapped in the cab and died after being freed, he said. A freight train carrying 15 empty tanker cars also derailed on a separate stretch of track between the villages of Stroganovo and Mshinskaya further south, he added; there were no casualties from that incident.
A source in Ukraine’s Main Directorate of Intelligence, known as the GUR, claimed responsibility for two of the railway attacks but did not claim the derailment that killed the driver in Leningrad. The GUR source said the strikes targeted critically important logistical links that Moscow uses to supply forces in the Kharkiv and Sumy directions and said tankers were “destroyed along with their fuel.”
Russian officials and state media have in recent years repeatedly blamed Ukrainian sabotage for fires, blasts and derailments on the country’s extensive rail network, which Moscow acknowledges is used to move military equipment, fuel and personnel. Kyiv rarely publicly takes credit for such operations, though Ukrainian officials have in the past praised actions that disrupt Russian logistics.
Social media footage posted after the incidents — not independently verified — showed one carriage lying on its side several metres from the track with its undercarriage torn off. Local emergency services reported working to reopen lines and clear wreckage; regional governors described the scenes as causing significant disruption to rail traffic.
In a separate claim, a Ukrainian military intelligence source said forces also carried out a drone attack on a chemicals factory in Russia’s Perm region, more than 1,500 kilometres (930 miles) from the border. Russian authorities did not immediately confirm that strike.
The weekend events follow a pattern of increasingly frequent attacks on railway infrastructure inside Russia since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Moscow has regularly accused Kyiv of sending saboteurs and drones into Russian territory; Kyiv has at times signalled support for strikes on lines it says are used for military purposes while avoiding formal public claims.
Russian emergency and security services said they were investigating the causes of the derailments and the explosion in Oryol. Repair and recovery operations were under way on Sunday, and officials warned of continued disruptions to freight and passenger services on affected routes.