More than 360 Ukrainian locomotives have been hit by Russian drones in 2026 alone, Ukrzaliznytsia CEO Oleksandr Pertsovskyi told rail industry leaders at the InnoTrans Rail Leaders Summit in Berlin on September 23, and he urged his European counterparts to build enough redundancy into their networks to survive a comparable assault.

'Ensure that you invest enough to back up the system, because unfortunately there might be players willing to disrupt it', Pertsovskyi said, speaking after DB CEO Evelyn Palla had presented the German operator's DB 2035 strategy alongside Germany's Transport Minister Steffen Bilger and European Commission transport director Magda Kopczyńska.

Ukrainian government figures recorded more than 1 500 attacks on railway assets in the first eight months of 2026. By mid-September, more than 500 locomotives had been damaged or destroyed since the start of the full-scale invasion — more than half of them this year.

Trains become the target

The defining shift of recent months, according to Pertsovskyi, is precision. Russian attacks previously concentrated on fixed infrastructure, with traction substations a favoured target because they are large and predictable. Improved image-recognition technology on drones now allows strikes against rolling stock in motion.

'We used to believe that when a train was moving, it was in a safe spot', Pertsovskyi said. 'We know that more than 360 locomotives have been hit just this year.'

The pattern was visible to him even on the InnoTrans exhibition floor. Walking the halls that morning, he had watched a small robot playing music. 'I couldn't help but think that the same robots, the same technology', he said, were 'at that same moment flying above our trains' — using image recognition 'not to play music, but to destroy and kill'.

The threat is also approaching NATO territory. Earlier in September a drone struck the locomotive of a passenger train at Yahodyn, roughly 2 km from the Polish border, after UZ's monitoring system detected the incoming threat. The train was evacuated about 15 minutes before the strike and nobody was injured. 'They're getting closer', Pertsovskyi said. 'One of the strikes was 2 km from the border between Poland and Ukraine, which is effectively the border with NATO.'

Seven or eight stops a day

Sustaining operations under that threat has forced UZ to add an airspace surveillance layer to conventional dispatching. Pertsovskyi described a 'cutting-edge' underground monitoring centre giving 'pretty much real-time understanding of what happens in the air over our tracks'. 'That's not something you would normally think of for a dispatch centre', he noted.

Locomotives are especially exposed: they produce a large thermal signature and carry equipment whose loss can close an entire section of line. UZ passenger chief Oleh Holovashchenko has separately said that faster, jet-powered Shahed-type drones are shrinking the window in which crews can react.

Monitoring teams work around the clock, but UZ does not stop every train whenever an air threat appears. Dispatchers judge each service against its location and the immediacy of the risk. The operational cost is substantial. Some trains are halted seven or eight times in a single day, with passengers and staff evacuated each time until the all-clear.

Pertsovskyi said these procedures have generally kept crews and passengers clear of struck trains; he referred to only two cases this year in which train crews were killed. 'It's not helping our timeliness record, not helping operational performance', he acknowledged. 'But safety comes first, and that's how we operate.'

His message to Palla and the DB 2035 programme was direct. Ukraine's experience, he argued, shows resilience can no longer be defined purely in terms of conventional disruption. 'When I hear DB's 2035 strategy, my advice to them would be: always keep this resilience and safety pillar in mind', he said.

Westward gauge expansion continues

UZ is pressing ahead with 1 435 mm gauge construction towards the EU despite the intensified attacks. A 22 km standard gauge line between Chop and Uzhhorod opened in September 2025, enabling direct trains from Uzhhorod towards Wien, Budapest and Bratislava. Unresolved border procedures and questions over how to prioritise future standard gauge spending have delayed further work, but a connection from Mostyska to Lviv remains in the pipeline.

'Our dream is to connect Berlin and Lviv', Pertsovskyi said, crediting UZ's 260 000 employees with keeping both the network and that ambition running under fire. 'We will never stop, as much as they want us to do so.'