Last update: May 01, 2023, 5:15 PM IST
FILE – Workers prepare to remove a wagon after a train derailed near the village of Uglovka in Russia’s Novgorod region. (AFP)
The apparent attacks came a day after a Ukrainian strike killed four people in a Russian village in the Bryansk region and as kyiv prepared for a widely expected counteroffensive.
A Russian freight train derailed Monday in the western region of Bryansk, bordering Ukraine, after an “explosive device” exploded on the tracks, the local governor said.
On the same day, officials said power lines were downed in northern Russia, which the FSB security service called an “act of sabotage”.
The apparent attacks came a day after a Ukrainian strike killed four people in a Russian village in the Bryansk region and as kyiv prepared for a widely expected counteroffensive.
“An unidentified explosive device detonated, as a result of which a locomotive of a freight train derailed,” Bryansk Governor Alexander Bogomaz said on Telegram.
There were no casualties, he added.
He said emergency services were working at the scene and rail traffic in the area had been suspended.
There have been reports of acts of sabotage on railways in Russia and its ally Belarus throughout Ukraine’s Moscow offensive which lasted more than a year. But this is the first time that Russian officials have confirmed an attack of this magnitude.
Footage on social media showed the front of the train and several freight cars on fire and lying on the grass next to the tracks.
Russian Railways said the incident happened at 10:17 a.m. local time (0717 GMT) on Monday between the town of Unecha and the village of Rassukha in the southwestern corner of the region – about 100 kilometers away ( 62 miles) from the Ukrainian border. .
He said the front locomotive and seven carriages derailed “after the intervention of unauthorized persons in rail transport work”.
“Following the incident, the locomotive caught fire,” he said in a statement.
The public operator said firefighters were working at the scene and there could be delays to passenger trains from the region to Moscow.
Earlier on Monday, the governor of the northern Leningrad region, Alexander Drozdenko, said local power lines had been destroyed by an “explosive device”.
The official said the lines were damaged near the village of Susanino, 60 kilometers (37 miles) south of Russia’s second largest city, St Petersburg, and released images of the lines lying on the ground in a forest .
Drozdenko later said that the FSB security service opened a criminal case for “sabotage”.
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(This story has not been edited by News18 staff and is published from a syndicated news agency feed)
