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Russia’s War in Ukraine

Understanding the conflict four years on.

Vladimir Putin certainly knows how to say goodbye. On Sunday morning, Russia launched a drone attack on a train that was about to cross Ukraine’s border into Poland. The drone met its target and exploded on impact. Nobody was hurt because Ukrainian security had detected the incoming projectile and emptied out the train, as has now become common protocol in the country. But the attack made global headlines when Carl Bildt and Boris Johnson, the former prime ministers of Sweden and Britain, respectively, revealed on social media that they had passed that same border crossing just minutes earlier on a specially chartered train. It’s difficult not to interpret the incident, so far out west and so near the border of a NATO member state, as a message from Putin to Europe: Get out and stay out—or else.

I was on the chartered train, too, along with dozens of senior European diplomats, politicians, and think tankers, returning from an annual national security conference held at a secure location in Kyiv. Most of us imagined we’d be safe on our journey partly because, until very recently, Russia had been unable to strike trains to Kyiv’s west. But more than that, there was strength in numbers. Surely, we reasoned, Moscow wouldn’t try to attack a group of conference attendees that included sitting national security advisors from France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, along with several ministers from across Europe?

Vladimir Putin certainly knows how to say goodbye. On Sunday morning, Russia launched a drone attack on a train that was about to cross Ukraine’s border into Poland. The drone met its target and exploded on impact. Nobody was hurt because Ukrainian security had detected the incoming projectile and emptied out the train, as has now become common protocol in the country. But the attack made global headlines when Carl Bildt and Boris Johnson, the former prime ministers of Sweden and Britain, respectively, revealed on social media that they had passed that same border crossing just minutes earlier on a specially chartered train. It’s difficult not to interpret the incident, so far out west and so near the border of a NATO member state, as a message from Putin to Europe: Get out and stay out—or else.

I was on the chartered train, too, along with dozens of senior European diplomats, politicians, and think tankers, returning from an annual national security conference held at a secure location in Kyiv. Most of us imagined we’d be safe on our journey partly because, until very recently, Russia had been unable to strike trains to........

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