When people speak of strikes on "railway infrastructure," it is easy to forget that behind these words stand specific people on a specific shift. During the night, a Russian ballistic missile deliberately hit the Ukrzaliznytsia depot in Kyiv—six of the seven killed were employees of the company. Another worker is in the hospital with injuries.
"Night ballistic strikes on Kyiv—deliberately targeting the railway depot and other railway facilities," wrote Ukrzaliznytsia Chairman Oleksandr Pertsovskyi. According to him, "dozens" managed to take shelter, a workshop near the depot was destroyed, and movement was temporarily suspended on two sections due to fires.
Why the depot
A depot is not merely a repair workshop, but a hub without which train movement is physically impossible: locomotives are serviced here, trains are formed, and malfunctions are eliminated. A strike on such a facility is not a blow to the track, which can be quickly restored, but to Ukrzaliznytsia's ability to maintain regular movement in general, including evacuation and cargo transportation.
This fits into a broader trend: in recent months, Russia has increasingly attacked not the front line, but rear logistics and production hubs—food storage facilities, building materials warehouses, retail facilities. Railways are special on this list because they support both civilian mobility and part of military supply lines.
The scale of one night
The attack was not limited to the depot. In Kyiv, civilian infrastructure was damaged in five districts—Holosiivskyi, Darnytskyy, Dniprovskyi, Sviatoshynskyi, and Solomiyanskyi. According to the Kyiv City Military Administration, there were eight killed and seven injured in the city overall, including three children.
In Kyiv Region, the strike was equally painful: in Boryspil, a missile damaged a five-story residential building, from which 48 people were evacuated, and cars caught fire in the nearby parking lot. According to updated information from President Volodymyr Zelensky, there were four killed and 13 injured in Boryspil. One more person was killed at a damaged facility in the same city.
Overall, 12 people were killed as a result of the night attack across the regions, including a citizen of India, with dozens more wounded.
A problem that ballistics cannot silence
The main difficulty for Ukraine is not the number of strikes itself, but the shortage of missiles for Patriot systems capable of intercepting ballistic targets. Drones can be shot down by mobile groups and electronic warfare means, but against ballistic missiles without a sufficient number of Western air defense systems, cities remain vulnerable precisely at the point where the enemy strikes most precisely—at major infrastructure hubs within densely populated areas.
The question for the coming weeks is simple: will Ukraine manage to receive additional ammunition for Patriot before Russia repeats a similar strike on another transport or production hub—because after Boryspil and the Kyiv depot, the list of possible targets is far from closed.
