Economic terror: why Russia is targeting railroad hubs

25 September 2025 17:15

ANALYSIS FROM

Overnight Russian strikes in the Vinnytsia region damaged railroad infrastructure, causing delays in eight trains traveling from southern and western Ukraine. During the night, the shelling caused a power outage in four sections. Fortunately, there were no casualties, according to Ukrzaliznytsia. The consequences of constant shelling of railway stations were investigated by [Kommersant].

Recently, enemy attacks on the railway infrastructure have become more frequent. On the same night, September 25, in addition to Vinnytsia region, separate sections of Ukrzaliznytsia in Mykolaiv and Kirovohrad regions were attacked, which led to blackouts in some areas and train delays.

All passengers and train crews of trains No. 54/254 Odesa-Dnipro, Kryvyi Rih and No. 8/7 Odesa-Kharkiv had to take shelter. Fortunately, there were no injuries. UZ has dispatched backup locomotives to all de-energized sections and is assessing the damage and calculating losses.

This is not the first large-scale attack on UZ: on September 17, a complex enemy attack on a substation caused delays in passenger trains in Odesa and Dnipro. Some trains were rerouted and detoured; 20 reserve diesel locomotives were deployed. A number of trains were stopped by dispatchers at a safe distance from the affected area. This primarily concerned suburban trains.

Ukrzaliznytsia emphasized that the experience of the railroaders gained over the years of the full-scale invasion and the developed crisis management protocols are working: trains continue to move no matter what, and passengers reach their stations despite the enemy’s attempts to disrupt the plans.

Targeted attacks on hub stations

Serhiy Vovk, Director of the Center for Transportation Strategies, in his comments [Kommersant] noted that Russia has chosen the tactics of economic terror, so to speak, i.e. striking at the main centers of production. Very often, these production facilities are not involved in any military industry at all.

We saw that ports, which are the main gateways for exports, were also in the target area. And now, unfortunately, we are really noticing an extraordinary increase in strikes on railway junctions. I think the logic here is quite simple to understand, because if a strike on one enterprise can lead to its shutdown, such a strike can paralyze the economic activity of several enterprises and even individual regions. That is, it is clear that in this way Russia is trying to reduce the economic potential of our country, and therefore the resources needed to cover defense spending and protection against aggression,” emphasizes Serhiy Vovk.

The second important goal, the expert believes, is, of course, the impact on people, because the railroad is one of the main operators of transportation of people. And all these stories lead to constant changes in train schedules, very often to transfers to some other means of transportation:

This has also happened before, and, of course, this is another means of psychological pressure on the population to show that, in fact, no one is safe even on such transport as the railroad.

As emphasized by Serhiy Vovk, it is difficult to assess the consequences and scale of the strikes in detail, but what we can see from the information that is emerging is that the strikes are being targeted at hub stations, i.e. where the cargo flow from several regions converges;

This is the number one goal. Secondly, strikes are carried out on energy infrastructure facilities in order to, again, paralyze the supply of electric traffic on electrified sections of the network. It is clear that these are extremely vulnerable points on which the operation of the railroad transportation system as a whole directly depends.

Not the military, but civilians are being targeted

Economic expert Andriy Novak comments [Kommersant] noted that the Russian army has begun to use the tactics of the Ukrainian Armed Forces:

“Today we see that the Russian army is beginning to copy the actions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, and after the Armed Forces launched a massive attack not only on Russian energy facilities, oil refineries, pipelines, pumping stations, but even earlier, the Armed Forces began targeted attacks on logistics points in Russia. First of all, at railroad logistics warehouses and railroad hubs. And after a while, the Russian army began to do the same, attacking Ukrainian railroad facilities.

But, as Andriy Novak emphasizes, unlike the Ukrainian strikes, which are aimed specifically at military logistics, we see that the Russian army is actually hitting mostly passenger cars, which are suffering:

We have seen numerous testimonies, photos, and videos of destroyed passenger cars, ranging from express, high-speed, Hyundai, and other ordinary passenger cars of the Ukrainian railroad. This suggests that Russia also intends to strike, as it has done in the past, at the Ukrainian energy sector, and now also at the Ukrainian railroad, wanting to cause maximum discomfort for Ukrainians.

The Ukrainian army is striking at the military and around military facilities that supply the Russian army, the expert emphasizes.

Author – Alla Dunina

Мандровська Олександра

Editor