The European Union's top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, said on September 14, 2026, that a Russian strike on a Ukrainian train near the Polish border was intended to intimidate Western countries into abandoning their support for Ukraine.
Kallas, the EU's High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, made the comments while answering questions from journalists at the European Arctic Summit in Finland.
She said the attack was clearly an attempt to intimidate Western countries so they would stop supporting Ukraine and stop traveling there to show their support, adding that this was precisely the goal and that it amounted to a clear signal to the Western world.
Kallas urged Western partners to respond to the strike by continuing, rather than reducing, their support for Ukraine.
She said the real question was what conclusions the West would draw from the signal, and argued that the response should be the opposite of what Russia wanted. She said Western nations had to show they stood with Ukraine and could not be intimidated, warning that otherwise Russia would simply achieve what it was after: the subjugation of Ukraine.
Kallas added that, as she had said many times before, this was not Russia's final objective, and that its ultimate goals were far broader, which is why the West needed to remain firm.
Background to the diplomat's remarks
Kallas has served as the EU's chief diplomat since December 2024, after previously serving as prime minister of Estonia, a Baltic state that borders Russia. She has been one of the bloc's most outspoken voices calling for continued military and political backing of Ukraine since Russia's full-scale invasion began in 2022.
Her comments followed remarks by Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who spoke of an escalation in Russian actions near Poland's borders, according to the report.
The attack on the train
On September 13, a Russian drone struck the locomotive of a passenger train in Ukraine's Volyn region, about two kilometers from the border with Poland. Ukrzaliznytsia, Ukraine's state railway operator, said no one was injured in the strike.
Shortly before the attack, a train had departed Yahodyn station earlier than its scheduled time. That train was carrying former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson along with other European officials and diplomats, according to the report.
Ukrzaliznytsia has said the drone's intended target may have been the train carrying Johnson, but that it had already left the station by the time the strike occurred.
Volyn, in northwestern Ukraine, lies directly on the frontier with Poland, a NATO and EU member state, making rail links through the region a key route for Western officials and dignitaries traveling to and from Ukraine.
