Russia strikes civilian train in Ukraine, killing five, in an attack Zelensky calls ‘terrorism’

By Daria Tarasova-Markina, Victoria Butenko, Ivana Kottasová, CNN

(CNN) — At least five people were killed in a Russian drone strike on a civilian train in northeastern Ukraine, the country’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said, describing the attack as an “act of terrorism.”

Emergency workers were confronted with scenes of carnage at the site of the attack in the Kharkiv region on Tuesday, with victims’ body parts strewn among the burnt wreckage, making it impossible to immediately determine the number of casualties.

Nearly 300 people were travelling on the train, which is used by Ukrainians to visit soldiers on the front lines.

“In any country, a drone strike on a civilian train would be regarded in the same way – purely as an act of terrorism,” Zelensky said in a statement on Telegram, adding that “18 people were in the carriage hit by one of the Russian drones.”

The Kharkiv Regional Prosecutor’s Office said the remains of five people had been found, and that identification would only be possible after DNA testing.

While Russia has previously targeted Ukraine’s railway infrastructure, a direct strike on a passenger train is unusual.

Ukrzaliznytsia, the national railway operator, said on Wednesday that two people were injured and one remains missing. The company said flags at all railway stations across the country would be lowered and a minute of silence observed to honour the victims.

Ukrzaliznytsia said the train was traveling from Chop and Lviv in western Ukraine to Barvinkove, on the edge of the Donetsk region. This is the closest station to the front lines, currently some 70 kilometers (43 miles) away.

Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister Oleksii Kuleba said the drones hit the front of the train’s locomotive as well as a passenger carriage.

Video provided by the Ukrainian government showed the train after the attack, with smoke and flames pouring out of the broken windows of a destroyed car.

Another video shows a young woman being rescued from the train with her tiny baby. Visibly distressed and in shock, she is heard sobbing and explaining that she was travelling to “show my son to his father.”

Footage posted on social media showed passengers, including people with small children, evacuating the burning train and walking into the snow-covered woods by the side of the railroad with their bags in hand.

Russia has previously launched strikes on railway stations in Ukraine. One of the deadliest attacks of the war occurred in 2022, when Russian forces carried out a missile attack on a train station in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk, killing 61 people including several children.

Child pulled from burning building

There were further deadly Russian strikes across Ukraine overnight into Wednesday. In the Kyiv region, a couple were killed when a missile hit their apartment block as they slept, while the woman’s four-year-old daughter survived.

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty journalist Marian Kushnir, who also lived in the apartment block, told how he discovered the child wrapped in a blanket and crying.

“I was at home when I heard an explosion. A drone crashed into the roof of our building, hitting the top two-story apartment,” the news outlet quoted Kushnir as saying.

Running upstairs to the site of the impact, Kushnir said he found the child and carried her out of the burning building before returning to check for other survivors.

“I ran to the child, took her off the sofa, carried her out of the apartment, gave her to one of the neighbors and ran back inside, thinking that perhaps the people inside were still alive. But the fire had already spread too far,” he said.

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CNN’s Max Saltman and Sophie Tanno contributed reporting.