Strikes resulted in bridge damage and multiple train derailments
In the Bryansk region of Russia, a series of drone attacks on railway infrastructure were recorded on September 28. The incidents resulted in damage to a bridge on the Dyatkovo-Lyudinovo section and dozens of railcars derailed. This was reported by The Moscow Times citing guberniya.tv, according to the portal PromPolitInform.
According to the acting head of the region, Egor Kovalchuk, during the morning attack on the Dyatkovo-Lyudinovo section, part of a railway bridge was destroyed, causing 10 railcars to derail. A similar incident occurred in the Unecha district, where a drone strike caused 18 empty gondola cars to jump the tracks.
Another instance of track damage was recorded in the Navlya district. Local authorities stated that despite the destruction of infrastructure in all three cases, there were no casualties, and rail traffic on the damaged section in the Navlya district continued according to the schedule.
History of incidents on the Russian railway
Previous instances of damage to Russian railway tracks were linked to sabotage or explosions; however, the use of drones to strike these targets had not been previously reported. Throughout 2025 and the first half of 2026, a series of railway accidents occurred in the Bryansk, Kursk, Voronezh, Belgorod, Leningrad, Oryol, Pskov, and Ulyanovsk regions.
These events often led to large-scale consequences: in particular, in the summer of 2025, a bridge collapse onto a passenger train in the Bryansk region resulted in seven deaths. Similar incidents were accompanied by traffic stoppages and injuries to both civilian passengers and railway personnel.
Losses of Ukraine’s locomotive fleet
In parallel, Russian military forces are conducting systematic attacks on Ukrainian railway infrastructure. Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, over 500 locomotives have been damaged, with the majority of these losses occurring in the last eight months as the enemy began destroying up to 40 units of equipment per month.
Head of Ukrzaliznytsia Oleksandr Pertsovskyi has noted the impossibility of rapidly restoring the fleet, even with international financial support. The intensity of the destruction of traction rolling stock within 200 km of the front line significantly exceeds the company’s technical capacity to repair damaged machinery.
Illustrative photo: ArmyInform / CC BY 4.0
Read also: Ukrainian Defence Forces launch massive drone attack on 12 regions of the Russian Federation
