Poland and Ukraine have denounced Russian strikes near the Polish border that hit a Warsaw-bound train close to a frontier checkpoint, shortly after another train carrying several EU officials and former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson had passed through the same line.

Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk said he expected Moscow to escalate the war “in the coming weeks” following the strikes, which hit a train just two kilometres from the Polish border. “We cannot exclude that the escalation will also affect our territory… I hope not,” Tusk added.

EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said she believed the strike so close to the Polish border was designed to “scare” Western countries backing Kyiv. “It is clearly meant to scare Western countries from supporting Ukraine, from going to Ukraine to show support,” Kallas said, urging Kyiv’s supporters to do “the opposite”.

Poland’s Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski called the incident an “escalation” and urged allies to “double” their support for Ukraine. “This was just a few hundred meters from the Polish border; this affects the safety of my countrymen,” Sikorski said. Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiga said President Vladimir Putin considered Russia to be “de facto” at war with Europe. “Putin’s terror is literally knocking at the door of the European Union and NATO,” Sybiga said.

The train was at Yahodyn station when the strike occurred. According to reports, only the train’s engine was hit. Ukrainian authorities said all passengers were evacuated and no casualties were reported. Shortly before the train was hit, a separate train carrying senior EU officials and former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson had passed through Yahodyn on the same line towards Poland, returning from a conference in Kyiv. Former CIA director David Petraeus was on board another train at the same station at the time of the attack. He told the New York Times he heard Russian drones overhead and a subsequent explosion, describing it as “terrifying”.

Petraeus later said: “For those who have not been under fire, this was terrifying… This is the act of a truly barbaric leader trying to terrorise Ukrainian civilians”. Johnson condemned the attack in a post on X, saying: “I don’t know what warped logic drove Putin to blow up a stationary Ukrainian locomotive on the Polish border this morning. What we can say for sure is that this is the kind of random and senseless attack Ukrainians are enduring every day — even on civilian railways”.

Russia said it had hit “railway infrastructure used to transport military cargo” from European countries. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Moscow of “deliberately” striking the locomotive. “It is precisely to prevent these strikes from spreading further into Europe that Ukrainian men and women fight every day, give their lives, and do not allow the aggression to expand,” Zelensky said.

Elsewhere, Russian strikes on Ukraine on Sunday killed at least two people in the city of Kramatorsk. Ukrainian officials also reported that 20 people, including two children, had been injured in the southern port city of Odesa.