Recent Ukrainian long-range strikes have concentrated on Russia’s south-western rail network with the primary objective of damaging the Kremlin military supply to its troops in the east of Ukraine. Another secondary goal of hitting trains and rail infrastructure inside Russia is to prevent the Kremlin from concealing the reality of the war from travelers.

Waves of long-range Ukrainian drones have winged their way into Russian air space almost every night since mid-July. The air raids averaging 30-50 unmanned aircraft have scored spectacular hits and shut down traffic, sometimes for days.

According to reports from both sides, Russia’s railroad engineers have mostly managed to keep traffic moving by repairing track and adjusting routes. The strike campaign is, however, playing havoc with the on-time levels of performance expected by summer vacationers of Russia’s traditionally efficient national railroad company Russian Railways – and the Ukrainian attacks are continuing.

When and why?

Open sources say Ukraine’s military probably kicked off its campaign against Russia’s south-western railroad network on July 12 with a short-range drone strike hitting a train switching yard in the town Kalchyk, in Russia-occupied Donetsk region.

The main targets of the Ukrainian strikes – locomotives, train cars and control nodes in Russia’s south-western Rostov region – are playing havoc with long-distance passenger trains carrying summer tourists from Russia’s heartland to the Black Sea beaches of Adler and Sochi. In some cases, Ukrainian drones have torched entire fuel trains bringing movement to a full stop inside rail stations needed to transit dozens of passenger trains a day.

The most recent attacks, a double raid on Tuesday, targeted electricity distribution substations in the Russian-occupied town of Makiivka, in the Donetsk region. The first set fire to the Chaykino-330 substation which delivers electricity to the region’s rail networks. Locals reported massive explosions following drone impacts and subsequent power outages. The second attack struck and set ablaze the nearby Dvoynaya energy substation, another site critical to power trains to and from Russia.

Pro-Russia “journalist” Yegor Guzenko in a video shot in Makiivka said Ukrainian drones had intentionally targeted the region’s energy infrastructure in the region, with civilian apartment buildings also being hit and some districts of the city – home to a pre-war population of more than a million people – lost power completely.

The railroad in Ukraine’s heavily industrialized Donbas region, with Donetsk at its center, operates almost exclusively on electric powered locomotives.

A third and even more spectacular Tuesday drone attack hit railway infrastructure in the town Salsk, in Russia’s Rostov region, the effective terminus for the main line between Rostov and occupied Donetsk. Ukrainian drones hit a train loaded with fuel and set it on fire and killed a civilian in his automobile. Overhead power lines were damaged and train traffic through Salsk station came to a complete halt, officials said.

Images recorded by NASA’s world fire watch satellite network FIRMS on Wednesday showed three major fires burning in Donetsk’s eastern suburbs at the location of industrial railroad lines and infrastructure (see below).

Travelers trying to take the train between Rostov and destinations as far away as Novorossiysk and Adler faced delays lasting “more than four hours”, Rostov governor Yuriy Slesar said in a statement that asked for passenger patience.

Still, they keep on coming

On July 27 Ukraine targeted the Likhaya switching station to the north of Rostov, a critical intersection, low-flying drones hit and demolished the upper stories of a switching control building and setting transmission equipment on fire. The same day they struck and damaged equipment and a control building at Zhutovo station in Russia’s Volgograd region, a key switching station. Open-source video showed a control building with its walls blown out and burning power equipment.

Train movement through the station was halted for more than ten hours. Rail lines servicing Vologograd’s main airport lost power as well, delaying or grounding several flights, Astra reported.

On the July 23 drones hit the modern control station built in 2017 in the town of Kamenolomna near Rostov. The facility was the Russian railroad’s main traffic management station for all rolling stock moving in the south of Russia.

Although the trunk line running Volgograd-Rostov-Donetsk and spurs servicing has been Kyiv’s primary target for the bombardment campaign, strikes on July 23 and 24 hit rail infrastructure in Russia’s Krasnodar region, on the Black Sea. Lyiutiy long-range drones breaching Russian air space over the city of Adler according to local reports targeted the railway station, a rail bridge, a train marshaling yards and power transformers providing electricity to local rail.

According to a Jul. 29 RIA Novosti report, the Adler strikes forced delays to trains carrying people between the resort city Adler and cities thousands of kilometers away, including Yekaterinburg in west Siberia, Cheliabinsk in the Ural mountain region and Krasnoyarsk and Chita in east Siberia. Russia Railways’ Federal Passenger Company (FPC) regrets the delays and will do “everything possible” to assist travelers, an FPC statement said.

Russian media reporting

While some Russian media has reported effects of Ukrainian drone strikes fairly honestly others hide reality with the use of euphemisms.

The privately-run, regional Bezformata news platform reported on Tuesday that delays to Russia’s Black Sea region from Ufa, Tartarstan were the result of “breaks in train movement… caused by falling drone debris”.  The more mainstream Komsomolskaya Pravda said Ukrainian drones strikes hit and damaged railroad infrastructure causing delays lasting a half day or more.

The state-operated RIA Novosti warned the strikes delayed 18 passenger trains for upwards of seven hours, some worse than that, but offered no details to its readers about how Ukrainian drones had somehow managed to breach Russian Federation air space.

CyberBroshono, an OSINT research group specializing in geo-location of combat activity during Russia’s war on Ukraine reviewed attacks by Ukrainian long-range drones from July 21-29. It said at least seven key nodes on the Russian national railroad’s South Caucasus network serving regions south-west Russia had been damaged.

The Israeli military analyst Yigal Levin in a Tuesday analysis said: “The Ukrainians are focusing on Russia’s southern rail network supplying combat operations in Ukraine’s east… All indications point to a deliberate and systematic effort to disrupt the route.”

The OSINT research group Tatarigami_UA wrote: “Overall, our team sees a systematic approach with deliberate target selection. The strike on the fuel train (in Salsk) indicates that Ukraine had detailed intelligence to accurately calculate the time of the attack.”