Russia's drone strike near the diplomatic train at Yahodyn

A Russian drone destroyed the locomotive of a passenger train at Yahodyn station, Ukraine, on the morning of September 13, 2026, roughly 2 km from the Polish border. No one was hurt - passengers had evacuated about 15 minutes before impact - but the train that was hit was not the one drawing the most attention that morning. Ukrainian Railways (Ukrzaliznytsia) said it is "quite likely" the drone had deliberately targeted a different train, per i24NEWS: a diplomatic service carrying former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt, and other European officials, which had departed Yahodyn earlier than scheduled and had already crossed into Poland by the time of the strike. NBC News reported the same assessment as "highly probable."

A third train, and a former CIA director, were also at the station

Former CIA Director David Petraeus was travelling on a separate train that was still at Yahodyn when the strike happened; his train was evacuated but not hit. He was not the diplomatic train's passenger and no report identifies him as a target - the "quite likely" target, per Ukrainian Railways, was the diplomatic train itself, which had already left. Petraeus told reporters he could hear drones overhead before the evacuation, calling the strike "the act of a truly barbaric leader trying to terrorize Ukrainian civilians" and saying there was "no military justification" for it, per i24NEWS.

Johnson posted on X that he did not know "what warped logic led Putin to blow up a stationary Ukrainian locomotive at the Polish border," per EUobserver.

The officials were leaving a Kyiv security conference

Petraeus, Johnson, Bildt, and the other officials on the two trains had been in Kyiv for the Yalta European Strategy (YES) conference, an annual security forum. Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski had addressed the same conference on September 11-12, telling attendees, per Kyiv Post, that Poland and its NATO allies would "defeat Russia quite quickly" if attacked. He cited NATO's air-power advantage. The strike came a day after the conference wrapped, as delegates were travelling out on the same Kyiv-to-Poland rail line.

Part of a wider pattern of strikes on passenger rail near NATO's border

Yahodyn sits on Ukrainian territory, 2 km from the Polish border; no object crossed into Polish or EU airspace in this strike. EUobserver frames the strike as part of a wider 2026 pattern of Russian strikes on passenger rail, and notes the location, 2 km from a NATO member's border, as the point of the story.