Russia Reports Explosion Caused 2nd Border Area Train Derailment In 2 Days

The Bryansk region of Russia, close to both Ukraine and Belarus, is a primary staging area for Russian logistics support of invasion forces as well as a site of drone and missile attacks on Ukraine. 

That sabotage of Russian supply convoys appears to intensifying is seen as another sign of the coming Ukrainian counteroffensive. JL

Reuters reports and Cassandra Vinograd and Ivan Nechepurenko report in the New York Times:

An explosion derailed a freight train for the second day in a row in a Russian region bordering Ukraine on Tuesday. An explosion derailed a freight train in Russia’s Bryansk region on Monday, the latest in a spate of apparent attacks to hit the area bordering Ukraine. Officials in Kyiv have said they reserve the right to strike targets within Russia that they claim are used to attack Ukrainian towns and cities.

An explosion derailed a freight train for the second day in a row in a Russian region bordering Ukraine on Tuesday, sending both the locomotive and some cars off the tracks, authorities said.

The incident occurred in the western Bryansk region, which borders both Ukraine and Belarus. Russian officials say pro-Ukrainian sabotage groups have made multiple attacks there since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.

"An unidentified explosive device went off near the Snezhetskaya railway station. There were no casualties," Bryansk regional governor Alexander Bogomaz wrote on Telegram.

"As a result of the incident, a locomotive and several wagons of a freight train derailed," he added, without saying who was responsible.

Tass news agency, citing law enforcement agencies, said firefighters were working at the scene and two recovery trains had been dispatched to the area. Local prosecutors had begun an investigation into the derailment, it added.

Operator Russian Railways earlier said around 20 wagons had come off the tracks due to "unauthorized interference." Snezhetskaya is just to the southeast of Bryansk.

A freight train derailed around 150 km (90 miles) to the west of Bryansk on Monday after a blast. Pictures of that incident shared on social media showed several tank carriages lying on their side and dark grey smoke billowing into the air.

An explosion derailed a freight train in Russia’s Bryansk region on Monday, according to the local governor and the Russian railways company, the latest in a spate of apparent attacks to hit the area bordering Ukraine.

Photos and videos circulating on social media showed a large fire burning and a train tilted askew, with at least one carriage lying on its side.

The governor of the Bryansk region, Aleksandr V. Bogomaz, blamed an “unidentified explosive device,” saying in a post on the Telegram messaging app that there were no casualties. He did not say who was responsible, and Ukraine did not claim to have been behind the blast, although Kyiv generally maintains a policy of strategic ambiguity about strikes on Russian territory.

The Russian railways company said in a statement that “an intrusion by unauthorized individuals” derailed the train, which set the locomotive on fire. The incident blocked traffic on the rail line, the statement said.

In neighboring Belarus, the Ministry of Transport and Communications issued a statement saying that the blast involved one of its freight trains, the official Belta news agency reported. Eight cars of the 78-car train derailed, it said, but the locomotive crew was not injured.

Rybar, an influential pro-war Russian military blog that posted one of the videos, said on the Telegram messaging app that train cars carrying oil products and lumber were lying on their side.

The blast came a day after Mr. Bogomaz said four people in the region were killed by Ukrainian shelling from across the border.

Russia has used territories close to Ukraine — including the Bryansk region, along Ukraine’s northern border — to stage assaults, fire rockets, launch air assaults and mount other attacks throughout the 14-month-old war. The Ukrainian government has expressed growing concern that Moscow is using the Bryansk region to launch drone assaults.

Officials in Kyiv have said they reserve the right to strike targets within Russia that they claim are used to attack Ukrainian towns and cities, but have promised not to use weapons supplied by Western allies for such assaults, since allies fear Moscow could view that as a provocation.

In March, Ukrainian special forces said that they had destroyed an unmanned observation tower in Russia’s Bryansk region using a drone strike, a rare public acknowledgment of a cross-border attack that underscored Kyiv’s increasing willingness to directly strike Russian territory.

That came days after a brief armed incursion into a village in Bryansk by partisans claiming to fight for Ukraine, a rare raid inside Russia that prompted President Vladimir V. Putin to cancel a trip and convene an emergency meeting of his security council.