There is only one reason why Vladimir Putin is launching his vicious attacks on Ukrainian railways – including the otherwise pointless destruction of a stationary civilian shunting locomotive yesterday, only a mile or so from the Polish border.
The reason is that after four and a half years of a cruel and unnecessary war, in which he has lost 1.5million men, the Russian leader is getting absolutely desperate.
He is posting record losses every month – more than 40,000 men either killed or wounded so seriously that they cannot fight again, in both July and August.
Russia has not sustained losses like this since the Second World War. In the ten-year Afghan conflict, the Russians lost 15,000 men – and that was enough to help trigger the collapse of communism.
Putin cannot go on like this, and he knows it. He is killing more Russians (and assorted tragic North Koreans) than he can possibly recruit – not without a general mobilisation.
And he knows that Russian mothers will not allow that to happen. They will not send a whole generation to be slaughtered in the trenches of the Donbas, chased to death by the Ukrainian drones with the inevitability of wounded deer in flight before the wolves.
The otherwise pointless destruction of a stationary civilian shunting locomotive yesterday, only a mile or so from the Polish border
Putin knows the mood is even starting to change among Moscow military commentators, with some of his most bloviating and bombastic supporters now calling for talks. They have been appalled by the success of the Ukrainian drones. They have watched the roofs of their mighty oil refineries blown off like biscuit tins.
They have queued for hours for petrol – in one of the great oil and gas exporting countries in the world; and then found that 28 per cent of Russian stations supply fuel of such poor quality that you risk damaging your car’s engine.
There is a limit to the credulity of the Russian public, and the willingness of the Russian media to keep up the pretence that the war is going well.
This was supposed to be the decisive fighting season, and yet the gains have been trivial, and in some cases Putin’s forces have even been going backwards. The Russian leader is never going to take the Fortress Belt of the Donbas, not without sacrificing millions. He is never going to take the city of Zaporizhiyya. That is why he has been stepping up his attacks on the railways, sending more and more missiles at passenger trains in what can only be described as terroristic attacks. There have been more attacks on passenger trains in the past six months than in the whole of the preceding four years.
It will not work. I know the Ukrainian railway company, Ukrzaliznytsia, very well. I have travelled in great comfort on their network for thousands of miles and indeed I passed through that border station shortly before yesterday’s explosion.
The company has already lost 1,700 employees to Putin’s utterly criminal attacks. They are heroes. They will not give in now. They are capable of rebuilding track and bridges with prodigious speed, and the civilian population of passengers continues to show a phlegmatic ability to endure Putin’s blitz. As one Ukrainian woman put it to me at the weekend: ‘It’s terrible to admit this, but we just learn to adapt and get on with our lives.’
The only way to get this foul war over is to show Putin the truth – that he has no chance of winning. That means doing much more to help the Ukrainians.
There have been more attacks on passenger trains in the past six months than in the whole of the preceding four years
This weekend I visited the astonishing Ukrainian drone and missile start-up, Firepoint. They are now world leaders. They make the world’s best cruise missile – the Flamingo, that has been so devastating against Putin’s oil and gas industry.
But now they need to defend the trains and the cities, against Putin’s ballistic missiles, and against the new jet-powered Shaheeds. The Ukrainians desperately need better air defences, and with so many US Patriots being used up in the Gulf region, they have to be helped to make their own.
We need to give them the ‘seeker’ tracking systems to help them to take out Putin’s fast drones and neutralise his intercontinental ballistic missiles. It can be done, but it needs to be done fast.
Ukraine faces a grim winter, in which Putin is plainly going to step up his attempts to kill and terrify civilians – at work, at home, and on their way to work.
In the face of his new cruelty, and his new ruthlessness, we need a new seriousness from the West.
We need to help them to open the Black Sea ports, and get Ukrainian grain and other produce moving again.
We need to give them Starlink access to the skies above Russia, so they can take out the missile sites and bases that are being used to attack their populations.
We need to unfreeze the hundreds of billions of Russian cash – in Brussels and other Western capitals – and allow the Ukrainians to use it to fund their effort.
Putin will squeal. He will accuse the West of escalation – as he has at every stage in this conflict, of which he was the sole author, and which he could end tomorrow.
He will squeal because he is increasingly desperate. In the attacks on passenger trains, we see the bared teeth of a cornered rat. Sooner or later, he knows he will have to desist, and the more pressure we apply now, the sooner that moment will come.
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