Five killed in Russian drone strike on passenger train in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region

A Russian drone strike on a passenger train in Ukraine’s eastern Kharkiv region killed five people and injured two others on Tuesday evening, while overnight attacks elsewhere in the country killed a further three people, the Ukrainian authorities said on Wednesday.

According to the Kharkiv region Prosecutor’s Office, the Russian military targeted a train travelling from the city of Chop on Ukraine’s western border to the Kharkiv region city of Barvinkove in eastern Ukraine.

The attack occurred near the village of Yazykove, just a few kilometres from Barvinkove, with one drone directly striking a carriage and two more exploding near the train, the Prosecutor’s Office said.

In a social media post following the attack, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that, “in any country, a drone strike on a civilian train would be regarded in the same way — purely as an act of terrorism” and stressed there could be “no military justification for killing civilians in a train carriage”.

Over 200 people were travelling on the train, including 18 in the carriage struck by the drone, Zelensky added.

“Russia must be held accountable for what it is doing,” Zelensky said. “And this means responsibility not only for strikes against our people, against our life, but for the very ability to carry out such attacks.”