Rather than provide a link to this FT article, which many in the Community will not be able to access due to the pay firewall, I quote below the first, most interesting sentences in the article in question. It appeared in yesterday evening’s online edition and, interestingly, is not carried in this morning’s edition. Could the news have been too hot to handle before consultation with Washington?
Quote
A Russian drone hit a train near Ukraine’s border with Poland shortly after a group of visiting dignitaries passed through the crossing on Sunday, as Moscow launched its biggest drone barrage in months. The former British prime minister Boris Johnson, the former Swedish prime minister Carl Bildt and various European security officials had crossed to Poland along the same line just before the strike, according to Bildt and a representative of the summit the dignitaries were attending.
Unquote
The names listed constitute a rogues’ gallery of Russia haters who used their time in office in Washington, London, Stockholm and other capitals to destroy European relations with the neighbor to the East over the course of a couple of decades. Surely there are many in the Kremlin who would have opened the shampanskoye had there been a direct hit and killed them all at one go.
Boris Johnson was this morning quoted on BBC News as saying that the drone strike was just an example of the random nature of Russian attacks which pose a direct threat to European security. However, we may assume with confidence that the decision by Moscow not to kill this gang but to frighten to their boots the cowardly European leaders who regularly carry on diplomatic tourism to Kiev via the rail link from Warsaw for the sake of photo opportunities that win cheers from their home electorates.
Of greater importance, perhaps, this latest attack on one of the key land routes into Ukraine suggests that the Russian leadership at last has decided to put a full stranglehold on Ukraine, adding interdiction by rail and road to the already existing blockade of Ukraine’s Black Sea ports. If these attacks continue, then the end of the war is now a matter of months, not years and is not dependent on some massive ground assault that would be very costly in the lives of Russian service men.
I conclude with the observation that Russian action yesterday speaks much more loudly than Putin’s speechifying at the BRICS summit in Delhi over the weekend.
©Gilbert Doctorow, 2026
Agree with your last paragraph especially. Also, this shows the detailed intelligence Russia has. The closer the timing the better.
Apparently, what Russia did was, at precisely the right moment, strike a locomotive parked on a line adjacent to the train filled by those leading Euros -- something like the 200th Ukrainian locomotive which Russia has taken out of service. It certainly seems like a very well executed operation by Russia. Maybe the next time, those leading Euros will be less excited about an invitation to Kiev?
Interesting observation about Boris Johnson's write-up of this incident in the London Daily Mail. Judging by the comments, the English public is not all-in on supporting Ukraine ... or Johnson.