// BBC WORLD NEWS — MONDO
Fear and disruption for Ukraine's rail passengers as Russia escalates drone attacks
Russian drones started to attack Ukrainian passenger trains at the end of last year
Ukraine's railways have kept the country running since Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022. But attacks are intensifying, with more than half of all strikes on locomotives since then occurring this year alone, according to the state-owned operator.
Yuliia Ponomarenko, 27, a marketing specialist from Kharkiv, found her journey to Warsaw last month suddenly interrupted just short of the Ukraine-Poland frontier.
"The border guards started running around and shouting "Run! Get out of the carriages! There's shelling!"
A Russian drone had just hit a locomotive near the same border, and a special train carrying former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and other European dignitaries, had passed through minutes before.
Passengers on Yuliia's train were kept waiting for six hours while the fire up ahead was put out and the line cleared, she says: "We were really lucky that we were delayed a little and it wasn't our train."
She is among an increasing number of Ukrainian passengers facing disruption and long delays, as air raid alerts trigger emergency evacuations far from the battlegrounds of the east.
In September alone, 5,831 trains had to be evacuated due to Russian drone attacks, state owned railway operator Ukrzaliznytsia told AFP news agency on Monday. This meant on average each day, 205 trains were stopped.
It appears to be part of a wider assault on Ukraine's infrastructure, with two bridges attacked in Kyiv in the past few days and passengers of a metro train caught up in one of the strikes.
Passengers are routinely evacuated from trains and forced to wait on the trackside until the danger has passed