Moscow’s 'Brush-Back Pitch': Drone Strike May Have Targeted NATO Officials’ Kyiv Train

A Russian drone narrowly missed an announced diplomatic train near the Polish border with Ukraine on Sunday. The diplomatic train carrying several current and former NATO and EU officials, including former British prime minister Boris Johnson, home from the YES Forum in Kyiv, departed the Ukrainian customs station at Yahodyn "earlier than its scheduled time as part of real-time adjustments to train schedules due to the constant threat of Russian strikes."

One witness to the attack was former CIA director and retired general David Petraeus.

A former U.S. Army general, Mr. Petraeus is used to explosions, but he said: “For those who have not been under fire, this was terrifying.” A jet-powered Russian drone, identified by photos taken afterward, had detonated after striking the locomotive of the train next to his, he said.

“This is the act of a truly barbaric leader trying to terrorize Ukrainian civilians,” he said in a telephone interview on Sunday.

He also said, “There was no military justification for what Russia did in this case.” He's correct. This was a diplomatic train, and the Russians had been informed of its route and timing. 

While the diplomatic train escaped attack, another train in the customs yard was not so lucky.

“This wasn’t our train, but the one just minutes after us by the Polish border crossing,” [former Swedish Prime Minister Carl] Bildt wrote on X alongside a video appearing to show a drone hitting a nearby train as passengers evacuate.

A Russian drone today nearly struck a train carrying Boris Johnson, Friedrich Merz’s main foreign and security adviser Günter Sautter, Sweden’s former prime minister Carl Bildt and several other European security advisers, diplomats and German MPs who had attended the Yalta… pic.twitter.com/vHiAckD9U2

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) September 13, 2026

A gas station near the train station was also targeted.

I'm sure the false flag brigade will be out as they always are whenever Russia does something outside the norms of civilized behavior, which, to be honest, is just about any day ending in "y." The Russians don't seem to dispute what happened.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said its forces were targeting “railway infrastructure facilities in western Ukraine that are used to transport military cargoes from European countries,” according to state news agency TASS.

It is difficult to reconcile a drone attack on a train station on Sunday, when the Russians knew the diplomatic train would be there, as anything other than a "brush back pitch" to tell everyone, "if we wanted to kill you, we could."

This follows a series of provocations at Leipzig/Halle airport in Germany involving failed drone attacks on aircraft; see Berlin Takes Action on Russian Terrorism but Is Hamstrung by Timidity and Division – RedState. Russia is routinely sending its drones into NATO airspace to either judge response time or just to make life more interesting for the airspace management and defense folks. Sunday, a Russian drone was discovered on the beach near a Polish air force training area. A month ago, a NATO fighter shot down an unidentified drone over Latvia. Numerous sabotage actions in Europe seem to be directed by Russia; see A Polish Drone Factory Hit, an Italian Ammo Plant Burns. This Is the Warm-Up; the War Is Coming. – RedState.

The High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy (I swear I'm not making that title up; Grand Poohbah would have been more serious), Kaja Kallas, opined, “This is clearly intended to frighten Western countries into ceasing their support for Ukraine, into refraining from going there to demonstrate their support.”

She's most likely correct, and it will probably frighten much of Europe into submission because if you have to fight for something you believe in, it's easier to change what you believe.

In my post on the drone attacks on the Leipzig/Halle airport, some people were skeptical about "what does Russia have to gain?" For at least 30 years, an element of Russian military doctrine has been "escalate to de-escalate." The idea is that, in the midst of a crisis, the best way out is to escalate it so the other side sees how bad things could get, then de-escalate it to Russia's advantage. The context of this is the doctrine that says if Russia engaged in an armed spat with NATO, the best way out is to pop a tactical nuclear weapon somewhere in NATO. That will bring both sides to the negotiating table. Throughout the Russo-Ukrainian War, which has now gone on for longer than U.S. involvement in World War II, Putin has trotted out surrogates who have threatened to nuke various European capitals.

I think Russia does see direct attacks on various European countries as a way out of the Ukraine morass. Putin has calculated, and I think rightfully so, that the U.S. will not agree to any military action under Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, and Europe, collectively, is too militarily weak and morally decrepit to do anything; see Putin Issues Major Threat to European Countries in a Serious Escalation – RedState.

So we need to expect a lot more provocations, and sometime in the next year we need to expect a direct Russian military adventure in Latvia or Estonia as a means to expand the Ukraine war and create the grounds to win from a herd of scared European diplomats what it could not win by force of arms on the battlefield. 

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