A Russian Shahed drone struck the locomotive of a civilian passenger train in southern Ukraine on Thursday, killing the driver and his assistant in one of the most visible attacks on civilian transport infrastructure in recent months. The strike hit the Odesa-Dnipro train in the Berezivka district of the Odesa region — a largely agricultural area in Ukraine's southwest — during the morning hours of 13 August 2026.
According to Ukrzaliznytsia, Ukraine's national railway operator, a monitoring team had detected the incoming jet-powered drone and ordered the train to halt near a station. However, the drone executed a sudden manoeuvre that left the crew with too little time to evacuate the locomotive after bringing the train to a stop. The two crew members were killed in the strike. Footage released by Ukraine's national emergency services showed the locomotive engulfed in flames and severely damaged, with a nearby carriage bearing shattered windows, as firefighters worked to extinguish the blaze. All 340 passengers on board — including 67 children — were evacuated safely and transported to Odesa by a convoy of 21 buses.
The attack took place during a broader overnight drone campaign in which Russia launched 133 drones at Ukraine, of which 111 were intercepted by Ukrainian air defences, the Ukrainian air force said. Separate strikes elsewhere in the country wounded six people.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy condemned the strike, stating that whoever operated the drone could not have been unaware that the target was a civilian train. He renewed his calls for Ukraine's allies to provide stronger air defence systems, an appeal he has made repeatedly throughout the war. The Shahed drone — an Iranian-designed, jet-powered loitering munition — has become one of Russia's most frequently used weapons in mass drone campaigns against Ukrainian territory.
The attack underscores the vulnerability of civilian infrastructure, including rail lines that have served as a critical lifeline for the movement of people and goods since Russia's full-scale invasion began in February 2022. Railway staff, who have continued operating despite persistent dangers, now face the additional threat of being directly targeted even when monitoring systems detect an incoming strike in time.