Vladimir Putin’s escalating strikes on Ukraine’s railway network appear to be driven by one central calculation: mounting desperation. That includes the destruction yesterday of a stationary civilian shunting locomotive near the Polish border, an attack with little obvious military value.
More than four and a half years into a war that has brought immense suffering and devastation, the Russian president is confronting the consequences of a conflict that has exacted an enormous human cost. Estimates cited put Russia’s losses at 1.5 million men.
Russian forces are reportedly suffering unprecedented monthly casualties. In both July and August, more than 40,000 troops were said to have been killed or wounded so severely that they could not return to combat.
Russia has not endured losses on this scale since the Second World War. By comparison, the Soviet Union lost around 15,000 troops during its decade-long war in Afghanistan, a conflict that contributed to the eventual collapse of communism.
Putin cannot sustain such a rate of attrition indefinitely, and he is aware of it. Russia is losing soldiers, along with North Korean fighters drawn into the conflict, faster than it can replenish its ranks without ordering a broad new mobilisation.
Yet a general mobilisation carries grave political risks. Russian mothers are unlikely to accept seeing another generation sent into the trenches of the Donbas, where Ukrainian drone warfare has made the battlefield increasingly lethal.
The destruction of a stationary civilian shunting locomotive yesterday, roughly a mile from Poland’s border, appeared to serve no clear military purpose
The pressure is also becoming more visible within Russia’s own pro-war establishment. Even some of Moscow’s loudest military commentators have begun advocating negotiations, alarmed by the effectiveness of Ukrainian drone operations and repeated attacks on major oil refineries.
For ordinary Russians, the impact is increasingly difficult to ignore. Motorists have reportedly spent hours waiting for petrol despite living in one of the world’s leading oil and gas exporters, while concerns persist that fuel sold at 28 per cent of Russian stations is poor enough to risk damaging vehicle engines.
There are limits to how long the Russian public can be expected to accept the official narrative, and to how long state-aligned media can maintain the impression that Putin’s war in Ukraine is progressing successfully.
This was supposed to be the decisive fighting season, and yet the gains have been trivial, and in some cases Putin’s forces have even been going backwards. The Russian leader is never going to take the Fortress Belt of the Donbas, not without sacrificing millions. He is never going to take the city of Zaporizhiyya. That is why he has been stepping up his attacks on the railways, sending more and more missiles at passenger trains in what can only be described as terroristic attacks. There have been more attacks on passenger trains in the past six months than in the whole of the preceding four years.
It will not work. I know the Ukrainian railway company, Ukrzaliznytsia, very well. I have travelled in great comfort on their network for thousands of miles and indeed I passed through that border station shortly before yesterday’s explosion.
The company has already lost 1,700 employees to Putin’s utterly criminal attacks. They are heroes. They will not give in now. They are capable of rebuilding track and bridges with prodigious speed, and the civilian population of passengers continues to show a phlegmatic ability to endure Putin’s blitz. As one Ukrainian woman put it to me at the weekend: ‘It’s terrible to admit this, but we just learn to adapt and get on with our lives.’
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The only way to get this foul war over is to show Putin the truth – that he has no chance of winning. That means doing much more to help the Ukrainians.
There have been more attacks on passenger trains in the past six months than in the whole of the preceding four years
This weekend I visited the astonishing Ukrainian drone and missile start-up, Firepoint. They are now world leaders. They make the world’s best cruise missile – the Flamingo, that has been so devastating against Putin’s oil and gas industry.
But now they need to defend the trains and the cities, against Putin’s ballistic missiles, and against the new jet-powered Shaheeds. The Ukrainians desperately need better air defences, and with so many US Patriots being used up in the Gulf region, they have to be helped to make their own.
We need to give them the ‘seeker’ tracking systems to help them to take out Putin’s fast drones and neutralise his intercontinental ballistic missiles. It can be done, but it needs to be done fast.
Ukraine faces a grim winter, in which Putin is plainly going to step up his attempts to kill and terrify civilians – at work, at home, and on their way to work.
In the face of his new cruelty, and his new ruthlessness, we need a new seriousness from the West.
We need to help them to open the Black Sea ports, and get Ukrainian grain and other produce moving again.
We need to give them Starlink access to the skies above Russia, so they can take out the missile sites and bases that are being used to attack their populations.
We need to unfreeze the hundreds of billions of Russian cash – in Brussels and other Western capitals – and allow the Ukrainians to use it to fund their effort.
Putin will squeal. He will accuse the West of escalation – as he has at every stage in this conflict, of which he was the sole author, and which he could end tomorrow.
He will squeal because he is increasingly desperate. In the attacks on passenger trains, we see the bared teeth of a cornered rat. Sooner or later, he knows he will have to desist, and the more pressure we apply now, the sooner that moment will come.