Who Holds the Rails Holds the World?
On 13 September 2026, a Russian drone struck the locomotive of the Kyiv-Warsaw train at Yahodyn station near the Polish border; the 206 passengers had been evacuated fifteen minutes earlier. With Ukrainian airspace closed, rail is the country's only entry route for weapons, grain and foreign leaders, and Moscow has made it a target; in September Ukrainian railways evacuated 5,831 trains. Separately, the closure of the Strait of Hormuz in late February 2026 was followed by a one-third rise in China-Europe rail freight and, in April, a first direct train from Wuhan to Baku in eighteen days without passing through Russia.
Why it matters: The episode shows that rail infrastructure has become an instrument of geoeconomics and geopolitical leverage.