EU Won't Be 'Scared Off' After Russian Drone Hits Kyiv-Warsaw Train
Europe will not be "scared off" after a Russian drone struck a passenger train near Ukraine's border with Poland, EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said.
Kallas, the EU's high representative for foreign and security policy and the bloc's top diplomat, spoke on the sidelines of an Arctic conference in Finland. She called the strike "clearly a message to the western world" and said Russia aimed to frighten Western governments, according to reports published on 14 September 2026. The Guardian
A spokesperson for Kallas said the EU strongly condemns the latest Russian strikes near the Ukraine-Poland border, including the attack on the passenger train. French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said the goal was "to intimidate Europeans, discourage and above all divide them."
The train hit runs between Kyiv and Warsaw. Ukrainian and Polish authorities said a lorry less than 1km from the Dorohusk-Yahodyn border crossing was also hit. No casualties were reported on the passenger train.
Ukrainian Railways said an earlier train carrying former British prime minister Boris Johnson and former CIA director David Petraeus had passed through before the strike. The operator said that diplomatic train left ahead of schedule and may have been the target. It also carried former Swedish prime minister Carl Bildt and several security advisers from European countries. The early departure was part of a real-time review of schedules due to the constant threat of Russian strikes.
Johnson wrote on X that Russian President Vladimir Putin blew up a stationary Ukrainian locomotive on the Polish border that morning. Katerina Sergatskova, director of Daily Humanity, was on the Warsaw-bound train and witnessed the attack. She said passengers were told to evacuate at about 9am as the train neared the Polish border, after disembarking for two hours in the middle of the night. A British economist on a night train from Kyiv toward Chelm in Poland also witnessed the attack.
The strike was part of a wider overnight barrage of more than 450 Russian drones and missiles. At least six people were killed and more than 40 injured. Ukraine's air force said it intercepted 405 drones and four missiles. Three people were killed in the Donetsk region. A 71-year-old woman was killed in the Mykolaiv region. Western Ukraine was particularly badly hit.
The strikes prompted air raid warnings in Poland. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk chaired an emergency meeting after the Russian drone attacks near the border. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha described the train attack as "Putin's terror knocking directly on the doors of the EU and Nato." The EU approved a €6.1bn tranche of a €90bn loan for Ukraine. A tranche is an installment, a slice of a larger loan released in parts, like paying a big bill over time.
The broader context here is geography. A strike on trains near an EU and NATO frontier tests procedures for airspace monitoring, cross-border incident management, and political coordination. For officials in Brussels, Warsaw and Kyiv, the questions now concern attribution, air defence coverage in western Ukraine, protection of transport corridors used by diplomats and civilians, and the pace of financial disbursement. Moscow has not been quoted in the verified accounts, leaving its account of the targeting unaddressed in this record. What European capitals decide on those practical files will shape movement on the Kyiv-Warsaw line and the credibility of deterrence signalling around Alliance borders.
