A Russian Shahed drone struck a passenger train carrying 593 people, including 15 children, in southern Ukraine on Sunday, setting the locomotive ablaze as it travelled from Zhytomyr to the port city of Odesa. No passengers were injured because a monitoring team had issued an advance warning that allowed an evacuation, and all travellers were transferred to buses to continue to Odesa.
Russian forces launched a second strike while authorities were still evacuating passengers from the burning train. The attack comes as Ukrainian air defences reported 127 Russian drone strikes across the country in a single wave, with additional drone attacks wounding seven people in Kharkiv.
The incident follows a mid-August Russian strike on another passenger train in the Odesa region that killed a locomotive driver and his assistant. The broader assault has killed more than 20 people in Ukraine over the past two days. The violence coincided with the arrival of Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen in Ukraine as part of a Nordic-Baltic diplomatic visit.