Starving the Russians Out: Ukraine Continues Campaign of Blowing up Railroad Tracks Supplying Occupied Areas

A view shows the site of a train derailment outside Simferopol on May 18, 2023. A train ca
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Oliver JJ Lane

Pro-Ukrainian saboteurs again knocked out a major rail link at the weekend, continuing a campaign of attacks that appear intent on isolating Russian-occupied Crimea from resupply.

A railway bridge in the village of Yakymivka, through which a railway connecting Russian-occupied Melitopol to Ruissian-occupied Crimea runs, was said to be destroyed in what is claimed to be a series of sabotage attacks against Russian-held railways over the weekend. Per a report from Ukraine’s state media organisation Ukrinform, the bridge was blown up on Sunday, and the line “served as part of the enemy arms supply artery from the temporarily occupied Crimea to the temporarily occupied part of the Zaporizhzhia region”.

Railway traffic was suspended while repairs took place. It is not the first time that attempts to cut off Crimea from resupply by rail appear to have taken place.

As is so often the case where attacks against Russian infrastructure are concerned — many of the weapons supplied to Ukraine from the West come with strict controls on them not being used outside Ukraine’s borders — the attack was attributed to “local partisans”.

Also impacting Russian-held railways in the region was an alleged drone bomb strike which derailed a goods train on Saturday, then on Sunday tracks blown up in front of an approaching freight train. On Monday, it is claimed a railway locomotive was blown up in its depot by “partisans”, the second such attack in as many months, according to Euromaidan.

Ukrainian saboteurs have been targeting Russian railway links because, in part, they are a crucial part of the Russian war plan. Because Russia is so large and its road network comparatively underdeveloped, the Russian army relies on the use of rail freight to move men, weapons, and supplies quickly to where they are needed. This includes to occupied Ukraine.

While this was initially seen as an anachronism and weakness early in the war, U.S. military leaders have observed the system broadly works well and Russia has been using railways to support its war machine in Ukraine. It even has a series of armoured trains it claims it has used to ferret out would-be saboteurs, yet those claims have fallen flat as the attacks continue.

The armoured trains are not the only measure taken by Moscow to prevent sabotage in occupied areas. Per Kyiv, one of the first things Russia does in new territory is install a network of CCTV cameras to “fight the Ukrainian underground”. The Ukrainian government said: “The enemy installed video surveillance cameras between Melitopol and Henichesk, fearing underground operations during the Ukrainian counteroffensive. The route further leads to the temporarily occupied Crimea… Previously, the Russians significantly increased the number of cameras in Melitopol , where partisans are active”.

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