A Russian drone strike has hit a passenger train at a station in Ukraine’s northern Sumy region, injuring dozens of people including passengers, according to regional governor Oleh Hryhorov and local authorities.
Mr Hryhorov claimed the Russian attack on Saturday local time had been a deliberate strike on the station in Shostka, north-east of Kyiv, and that the train hit had been travelling from the Ukrainian capital.
No figure was given for the number of casualties, but the governor posted a picture of a burning passenger carriage and said medics and rescuers were working on the scene.
“A brutal Russian drone strike on the railway station in Shostka, Sumy region,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wrote on Telegram, posting a video of a wrecked, burning passenger carriage and others with their windows blown out.
Mr Zelenskyy also said that passengers and Ukrainian rail workers were among the injured.
Three children were among those hospitalised, according to a Facebook post by the head of Ukraine’s national rail operator, Ukrzaliznytsia.
One of the company’s employees, a cashier, was also treated at the hospital, Oleksandr Pertsovsky added.
Russia struck two passenger trains in quick succession, first targeting a local service and then one bound for Kyiv, said Oleksiy Kuleba, Ukraine’s deputy prime minister and reconstruction minister.
Mr Hryhorov said in a statement on Telegram that an “operational headquarters” was being established at the scene.
The head of the local district administration, Oksana Tarasiuk, told Ukraine’s public broadcaster that about 30 people were injured by the strike.
No fatalities were reported in the immediate aftermath.
“The Russians could not have been unaware that they were targeting civilians,” Mr Zelenskyy said.
“This is terrorism, which the world has no right to ignore.”
Moscow has stepped up its air strike campaign on Ukraine’s railway infrastructure, hitting it almost every day over the last two months.
Russian strikes continue targeting power grid
The latest strike came a day after Russia carried out its largest attack on the Ukrainian gas network since the beginning of Moscow’s invasion.
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That attack consisted of 35 missiles and 60 drones targeting gas infrastructure in the Kharkiv and Poltava regions, according to Kyiv’s state-owned gas operator.
Moscow’s military has targeted Ukraine’s power grid relentlessly in waves of overnight attacks that have at times plunged millions into darkness and cut off heating supplies as temperatures plunged below freezing.
On Saturday, more drone and missile attacks were launched on the Ukrainian power grid near the northern city of Chernihiv, causing blackouts set to impact some 50,000 households, the regional operator Chernihivoblenergo said.
The head of Chernihiv’s military administration, Dmytro Bryzhynskyi, confirmed a night-time Russian attack on the city caused multiple fires, but did not immediately say what was hit.
Serhii Koretskyi, the chief executive of Naftogaz — Ukraine’s largest state-owned gas and oil company — said on Friday that Russia’s attacks had no military purpose, while Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko accused Moscow of “terrorising civilians.”
Moscow has claimed the strikes targeted facilities that support Kyiv’s war effort.
On Thursday, Mr Zelenskyy accused Russia of trying to increase the risk of nuclear accidents by deliberately staging an attack that cut off power to the decommissioned Chernobyl nuclear power station.
He said more than 20 Russian drones had been deployed in an attack on the town of Slavutych that cut power to the nearby Chernobyl plant for three hours.
Ukraine’s energy ministry said power had also been cut to a containment unit erected to minimise contamination from the world’s biggest nuclear accident in 1986.
Reuters
