A pro-Ukraine partisan group claims to have sabotaged Russian railway infrastructure, damaging supply routes for the Kremlin’s war machine. ATESH claimed an agent “paralysed” a rail junction near the city of Yekaterinburg, around 1,000 miles from the nearest Ukraine border.
In a translated post on Telegram, the group said it threatened Russia’s “entire military logistics” and “disrupted train traffic in all strategic directions”. The claims have not been independently verified and Moscow has not commented on the alleged incident. In the post, ATESH shared pictures and video of what appeared to show a cabinet on fire.
The group claimed it damaged relay equipment and that the junction targeted is used to “supply ammunition, armoured vehicles, fuel and personnel to the front, as well as to factories and warehouses in the north and east”.
“Now, military trains are idle, causing damage to the army’s rear,” ATESH said on Telegram.
It is not clear when the purported attack happened.
A map from ATESH suggests it was carried out on a 4,440-mile railway line, according to reports, in the western outskirts of Yekaterinburg in Russia’s Sverdlovsk region.
The group has regularly conducted sabotage operations on military infrastructure both in occupied Ukraine and Russia, reports the Kyiv Independent.
ATESH claimed to have destroyed a communications tower at an air defence factory in the Russian city of Tula last week.
The latest alleged incident comes days after a Ukrainian military intelligence source said Kyiv was behind an explosion on a railway line in western Russia that killed three Russian National Guard troops.
Two trains also derailed in Russia’s Leningrad region due to what the area’s governor said was “sabotage”.
However, a Ukrainian military source denied it was behind the derailment that killed a driver, reports say.
Russian rail infrastructure has been targeted as part of efforts to disrupt Moscow’s military supply chain in its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
The war has been raging for more than three-and-a-half years and latest Ukrainian estimates claim Russia has suffered almost 1.1 million casualties.
It comes as NATO bolsters its eastern flank after up to 24 Russian drones violated Polish airspace last week.
RAF fighter jets will fly air defence missions over Poland as part of the alliance’s new Eastern Sentry mission.
