A freight train came off its tracks in the Belgorod region bordering Ukraine, local authorities have said of the latest unexplained derailment to hit Russia’s railways.
Belgorod Oblast Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov posted on Telegram that a locomotive and empty freight wagons derailed in the region’s Novy Oskol district just before midnight on Tuesday because of “illegal interference with railway operations.”
He said emergency services attended the incident, in which there were no casualties, and passenger trains were rerouted. He added, “Information about the consequences is being clarified.”
Gladkov did not give a cause for the incident, but attacks on Belgorod’s infrastructure have been occurring frequently, with officials blaming either Ukrainian forces or pro-Ukrainian saboteurs.
In another unexplained incident, a video posted on the Astra Telegram channel on July 15 showed the smoking wreckage of a derailed train near the Lebedinsky mining and processing plant in the Belgorod city of Stary Oskol.
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The previous day, Astra had posted that nine rail carriages carrying grain had derailed at the city of Liski, almost 400 miles south of Moscow, in the Voronezh region.
Earlier in July, a freight train car derailed at a railway station in the Moscow region, which is part of the Oktyabrskaya Railway network linking Russia’s capital with its northwest. The incident occurred during shunting work, Russian media reported.
On June 26, nine out of 14 train carriages derailed in Russia’s northern republic of Komi, killing three people and injuring about 40 others. Russian Railways did not link the accident to sabotage, saying it had probably been caused by heavy rains washing away part of the tracks, the Associated Press reported.
On June 9, five fuel tanks derailed near the port of Ust-Luga in the Leningrad region, which hosts one of Russia’s largest oil terminals, according to the Rozpartizan Telegram channel.
In October 2023, the National Resistance Center of Ukraine said Ukrainian partisans had blown up a Russian train in the partially occupied Zaporizhzhia region of Ukraine, disrupting supplies for Moscow’s military.
In May 2023, railway officials blamed outside interference for a derailment between the cities of Simferopol and Sevastopol in Russian-occupied Crimea, which British defense officials said disrupted deliveries of supplies and weaponry to Russia’s Black Sea Fleet.
Russia has itself been accused of sabotage and arson attacks on infrastructure in the U.K., Germany and the Baltics. The head of the U.K.’s MI6, Richard Moore, and the head of the CIA, William Burns, wrote in the Financial Times last week that Moscow had been conducting a campaign of ever-bolder attacks. They did not list examples.
Vice Admiral Nils Andreas Stensønes, Norway’s spy boss, echoed the sentiment, telling Reuters regarding Moscow’s hybrid warfare campaign, “The risk level has changed.”
