The war in Ukraine has long since stopped being fought only at the front - it is increasingly being fought on the rails, in depots and against locomotives. Russia has aimed its "Geran" kamikaze drones (also known as "Shahed") at the Ukrainian railway network, hitting locomotives used to transport weapons in the Dnipropetrovsk and Kharkiv regions.

The numbers tell the real scale. According to Ukraine's deputy prime minister for reconstruction, Oleksiy Kuleba, since the start of the year Russia has damaged or destroyed over 200 locomotives and carried out more than 1,000 attacks on rail infrastructure. This is not random bombing - it is a strategy. Whoever controls the rails controls the logistics, the supply, and the speed at which weapons reach the front.

The Russian Defence Ministry, as usual, announced it briefly and confidently: "As a result of the strike, all targets were hit." Statements like this should always be read with reservation - they are part of the war just as much as the drones themselves. But the fact that Kyiv openly admits the loss of hundreds of locomotives shows the damage is real, not propaganda.

Why does this matter beyond Ukraine? Because it shows what modern war looks like - a cheap drone costing a few thousand dollars destroys a locomotive worth millions and paralyses an entire logistics chain. That is a lesson no army in the region can afford to ignore. The infrastructure we take for granted - rails, bridges, depots - becomes the first target in war. And defence against a swarm of cheap drones is still a problem no one has an easy answer to.