From Foreign Policy · Ravi Agrawal · · 4m
A drone hit the train we had just left
Foreign Policy's editor in chief went to Kyiv and came back worried about a weapon nobody knows how to stop.
In brief
Foreign Policy's editor in chief went to Kyiv and came back worried about a weapon nobody knows how to stop. Russia's Geran-5 drone flies like a cruise missile, Ukraine has run out of interceptors, and for the first time in years offense is outrunning defense. Originally reported by Foreign Policy.
A goodbye from Putin
On Sunday morning a Russian drone struck a train about to cross from Ukraine into Poland. It hit its target and exploded. Ukrainian security had spotted it coming and emptied the carriages first.
“Vladimir Putin certainly knows how to say goodbye.”
Minutes from the blast
Carl Bildt and Boris Johnson, former prime ministers of Sweden and Britain, posted that their chartered train had cleared that same crossing minutes earlier.
The message to Europe
A strike that far west, that close to NATO territory, reads as a signal rather than a battlefield move. Get out and stay out, or else.
“Get out and stay out, or else.”
I was on that train
The author was returning from an annual national security conference in Kyiv with dozens of European diplomats, ministers and think tankers.
Safety in numbers, we thought
The passengers assumed nobody would touch a train carrying the sitting national security advisors of France, Germany and the UK. Russia also had not managed to hit trains west of Kyiv until recently.
“We were wrong.”
The war is seesawing back
What rattled the author more than the attack was what he learned in Kyiv: battlefield momentum is tilting toward Moscow again.
Meet the Geran-5
Russia's upgrade of the Iranian Shahed-136 flies at about 370 mph, ranges past 600 miles, and carries nearly 200 pounds of explosive. It is not a souped-up drone anymore.
“The Geran-5 is essentially a missile.”
Nothing stops it
Ukraine has no drone that can intercept the Geran-5 and has run out of missile interceptors. Moscow is building the new drones by the thousands.
“its people are sitting ducks”
Putin picks bolder targets
With an unanswerable weapon in hand, the Kremlin has widened what it is willing to hit, which is how a train near the Polish border ends up in the crosshairs.
Four dollars underground
At a lunch with Ukraine's energy and mining CEOs, executives described spending $4 below ground for every dollar spent above it, burying the grid out of a drone's reach.
“they were spending $4 underground for every dollar in plain sight”
Spare parts as strategy
The plan was to stockpile extra transformers and grid components so damaged infrastructure could be swapped out fast. It sounded convincing in the room.
An hour later, the steel plants
Russia bombed two major steel plants, taking out precursors Ukraine needs to build those very contingencies.
“Wars keep peeling back new layers of the onion.”
Kyiv had been winning
Ukrainian drones had been striking deep into Moscow and hitting Russian energy sites. Putin quietly scaled back his beloved Victory Day parade in the spring for fear of attack.
From no cards to the key
The US and its Gulf allies came to Kyiv for advice on stopping Iranian drone and missile strikes. Ukraine went from holding no cards, as Trump told Zelensky in 2025, to holding expertise everyone wants.
The tech could spread
If Moscow shares Geran-5 parts with Tehran, Iran gains new reach against shipping in the Strait of Hormuz and US bases and energy sites in the Gulf.
“nobody currently knows how to stop dozens of drones hurtling to their target at above 300 miles per hour”
The budget is not great
MP Roksolana Pidlasa said Ukraine has spent $42 billion on defense this year and still cannot cover basic military costs.
“The war has become so expensive that this year, we cannot even cover basic military costs.”
Decentralize to survive
Prime Minister Sergii Koretskyi wants energy and logistics spread out rather than concentrated. Demand has already fallen 30 percent, partly from home solar, partly from factories going quiet.
“There must be decentralization in energy, in logistics, and in other sectors”
A tunnel with no light
UK security advisor Jonathan Powell borrowed a Shimon Peres line about the Middle East. His point: the Witkoff, Kushner and Ratcliffe visits to Moscow are at least the start of building a tunnel.
“The good news is that there is light at the end of the tunnel. The bad news is that there is no tunnel.”
The hall laughed
When Kushner said on video that Putin is very committed to peace, the Kyiv conference hall erupted in laughter. Meanwhile at the BRICS summit in Delhi, the communiqué did not mention Ukraine once.
“So much for the integrity of the tunnel.”
The big picture
Russia's Geran-5 drone flies like a cruise missile, Ukraine has run out of interceptors, and for the first time in years offense is outrunning defense.
