Russia Is Massively Bombing Ukraine’s Railways To Block Western Aid: ‘Preparing Major Offensive’

Russia has intensified its attacks on the Ukrainian railway network in order to “paralyze” military supplies of material from the West, with a view to a new offensive, a high-ranking Ukrainian official in the security field told AFP on Friday, quoted by News.ro.

The railway infrastructure is particularly vital in Ukraine, both in the transport of passengers and trade, as well as the military, because since the beginning of the Russian invasion, in February 2022, all civil air traffic is paralyzed.

“This is about classic measures before a large-scale offensive, expected in the coming weeks,” said a high-ranking source from the Ukrainian security system, interviewed by AFP regarding these attacks, under the protection of anonymity.

The goal “is to paralyze the deliveries, the transportation of military cargo,” she added.

The railway network has been regularly targeted in Russian bombings for two years.

Attacks have recently hit train stations, such as the one in Hramatorsk in the east, where dozens of people, mostly civilians, trying to flee armed clashes were killed in April 2022.

However, in recent weeks, there has been an intensification of bombings targeting railway infrastructures.

Western weaponry is targeted

On Thursday alone, attacks hit these infrastructures in three Ukrainian regions.

In Donetsk region (east), divided by the front line, three employees of the railway company Ukrzaliznitsia were killed in an attack targeting a railway installation.

On the same day, ten civilians were injured in a rocket attack at the Balaklia Railway Station, in the Kharkiv region (northeast), and railway infrastructure was damaged in Smila, in the Cherkassy region (center).

A massive bombing against railway facilities in Dnipro and in the region (center-east) killed one employee of Ukrzaliznîtia and injured seven others on April 19.

A week before, the Sumî Railway Station (north) was hit in an attack.

The Russian military claimed on Friday that it attacked a “train with Western weapons and military equipment” in the town of Udacine in the Donetsk region, and military “troops and equipment” in Balaklia.

She did not present data, and these statements seem to correspond to the attacks evoked the day before by Ukrainian authorities.

Starting from March, Russia multiplied its attacks targeting Ukrainian infrastructures, especially energy installations, of which it destroyed a lot, and more recently the railway infrastructure.

These attacks on railways come at a time when the United States has resumed military aid to Ukraine, after months of paralysis due to internal political rivalries.

Several hospitals were evacuated

Western weapons donated to Ukraine – artillery and air defense ammunition – are delivered in the greatest secrecy from neighboring countries, especially from Poland.

The head of passenger transport at Ukrzaliznitsia, Oleksandr Pertsovski, told AFP on Thursday that he had noticed “an increase in attacks on railway infrastructure”.

“We find that the attacks target railway logistics and essentially affect civilian installations. They carry out indiscriminate attacks on railway stations. It’s a very primitive way of doing it,” he said.

Weakened by a failed counteroffensive in the summer of 2023 and a months-long freeze in US military aid, Ukraine’s armed forces, short on men and ammunition, are under pressure across a wide swath of the front, especially in the east .

And the situation would worsen in the middle of May and the beginning of June, which will be a “difficult period”, warned on Monday the head of the Ukrainian military intelligence Kirilo Budanov.

This analysis is shared by Western officials, who predict that the next three months will be “very difficult” for Kiev’s forces.

Russian artillery fire killed two people on Friday in the Sumy region of northern Ukraine on the Russian border, according to the Ukrainian Interior Ministry, which said two elderly women were killed.

Three other people were killed in Ukrainian attacks in two Russian regions, Kursk and Briansk, but also in the Ukrainian region of Lugansk, almost entirely occupied by Russia, the Russian authorities announced.

Kyiv city hall has announced the evacuation of two hospitals – one pediatric – in the Ukrainian capital, fearing that Russia may attack them, as a video circulating online says that soldiers are in these institutions.

This “de facto announces an attack”, says the City Hall, which insists on the fact that these hospital centers are not military installations.

Publisher: BC

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