Failed Assassination Or Warning Shot?

Then-British Prime Minister Boris Johnson summits with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv during the first year of Russia’s invasion. Since then, the Kremlin has attempted to assassinate Zelensky, and might have similarly tried to kill Johnson with a recent airstrike hitting the rail line he was traveling on. (Photo by Alexey Furman/Getty Images)

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While Moscow’s drone strike hit a Ukraine railway line that Boris Johnson was traveling on, just weeks after Russia threatened retribution against Britain for supplying aerial weaponry to Ukraine, it is still unclear whether the attack was specifically aimed at assassinating the onetime British prime minister.

The advanced Russian drone exploded on impact with a passenger train that was just behind Johnson’s, and next to the one transporting David Petraeus, former head of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, who also could have been a target in the airstrike, according to Ukrainian government officials.

Yet Peter Dickinson, a leading expert on the Russian-Ukrainian armed conflict at the Atlantic Council, one of the top American think tanks on defense and diplomacy in Washington, DC, told me in an interview that Moscow may only have been aiming to terrorize top-tier Western statesmen and scholars who had attended a military conference in the Ukrainian capital, and were transiting via Poland to return back to their home bases across Europe and the U.S.

“Boris Johnson,” he said, “was one of dozens of dignitaries traveling out of Ukraine along the targeted rail line at that specific time.”

The objective of the strike might not have been “to kill anyone but rather to serve as a warning shot to scare visiting dignitaries and convince them that Ukraine is no longer safe to visit.”

“It is a classic example of [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s gangster tactics,” says Dickinson, who has produced the captivating war chronicles titled UkraineAlert since the start of Russia’s lightning invasion.

Putin “tries to intimidate opponents with thinly veiled threats and sends messages through acts of violence,” adds Dickinson, who was first dispatched to Ukraine 20 years ago as an officer of the British Council.

Yet officials at the government-operated Ukrainian Railways outlined chilling details of the airstrike on the rail line that connects the capitals of Ukraine and Poland in an official communiqué released this week.

“Shortly before the locomotive was struck at the Ukraine-Poland border, a diplomatic train was present at Yahodyn station.”

“On board,” they said in a play-by-play analysis of the attack posted on the messaging platform Telegram, “were security advisors from several EU member states and former European leaders, including former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson.”

“Former CIA Director David Petraeus was on another train present at Yahodyn station at the very moment of the attack.”

“The jet-powered drone that attacked the locomotive at the Ukraine-Poland border was detected,” the Ukrainian officials said, “and the signal to evacuate the train was issued just 15 minutes before the locomotive was hit.”

“It is highly likely that the Russian drone’s intended target could have been the diplomatic train, which had departed the station earlier than scheduled due to real-time schedule adjustments made in response to the constant threat of Russian strikes.”

They explained that railway leaders constantly change train schedules to avoid traveling along the tracks at precisely known times and thereby become a comparatively easy target for drones and missiles.

“The enemy continues its numerous attempts to attack,” the officials added.

Putin has a long history of ordering “theatrical assassinations” of his political enemies, even one who made it to seeming sanctuary in the United Kingdom, via exotic state-concocted poisons, says an eminent scholar at King’s College London.

Elena Grossfeld, a world-leading expert on Russia’s shadow war on the West, says Kremlin-ordered killings of democrats and defectors stretch from Siberian prison camps to the British capital, carried out by Putin’s operatives.

A scholar at the prestigious King’s Centre for the Study of Intelligence, Grossfeld told me in an earlier interview that the assassination of Putin’s foes, whether in Britain or inside Russia, via internationally banned chemical weapons or radioactive poison, “is a form of statecraft, conducted by intelligence organizations on behalf of the state.”

Right after Moscow’s assault on the Ukrainian-Polish rail line, Boris Johnson lashed out against the Kremlin for aiming the airstrike at civilians and diplomats, which is quite likely a war crime.

“I don’t know what warped logic drove Putin to blow up a stationary Ukrainian locomotive on the Polish border this morning,” Johnson fumed on X.

“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.”

“When are we going to give them the air defenses they need?”

“Why won’t we unfreeze Putin’s cash and give it to Ukraine?” he pleaded.

“There is more than €140 billion in a Belgian bank account – and about £10 billion in London.”

Johnson was referring to Russian government funds that have been frozen by financial institutions across the West following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, in violation of Article 2 of the UN Charter.

“The Ukrainians are going to win,” Johnson predicted. “But we will get this dreadful war over much faster if we all get serious and give them what they need and deserve.”

During his reign as prime minister, and ever since then, Boris Johnson has been an outstanding backer of Ukraine and its fight to save its democracy and independence.

Yet his current successor, Prime Minister Andy Burnham, has been just as strong in promoting the defense of democratic Ukraine, and in dueling with its anti-democratic invaders.

Just days after Russia threatened revenge against the UK for supplying Ukraine with fighter drones, and despite the Kremlin’s escalating rocket blitzes, Burnham publicly announced he was hand-delivering blueprints to assemble long-range cruise missiles into the embattled, pro-European nation.

Traveling along the same train line that would weeks later carry Boris Johnson into Kyiv, Burnham brought plans for Ukraine to co-produce the formidable Storm Shadow missile designed by the British and French.

Britain’s new, widely popular prime minister said in an official bulletin that the French would help “establish local assembly lines in Ukraine” for the bunker-buster missile.

Burnham trekked into Ukraine right after Putin’s envoys to the UK issued a threat potentially targeting all of Britain.

“Reports that the Kiev regime is using British drones to carry out strikes deep inside Russian territory confirm that London is deliberately opting for an escalation of the Ukraine crisis,” the Russian diplomats said in a provocative message posted on Telegram.

“The United Kingdom is acting as an accomplice and co-perpetrator of the bloody crimes and terrorist attacks committed by Ukrainian neo-Nazis, seeking to contain Russia and inflict maximum damage on it by proxy.”

“London’s actions will inevitably carry consequences for which it will have to answer.”

“The deeper its involvement in the conflict and the greater its support for Kiev’s terrorist machinery, the higher the price it will pay.”

Dickinson, a pre-eminent scholar on the clashing war strategies and leaders of liberal Ukraine and autocratic Russia, told me this new threat is part of Putin’s expanding hybrid war against Ukraine’s allies across Europe.

The escalation of this shadow war, he says, has included Moscow’s dispatching a drone equipped with explosives into a German airport, near Western and Ukrainian defense aircraft, and firing off a missile nearly 100 kilometers into Polish territory.

All these provocative acts, he says, are targeted at destroying NATO’s unity but stopping short of inciting an all-out war with the more powerful forces of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Yet the new air attack that threatened British and American leaders, right beside the border with NATO state Poland, could be edging the two sides closer to an ultimate clash of civilizations.

Rather than attempting to walk back the aim of the drone assault near the diplomatic train heading into Poland, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov this week underscored Moscow’s ability to harm or kill anyone on Ukrainian territory, including high-level statesmen.

“Our military has been conducting operations across the entire territory of Ukraine and will continue to do so,” Peskov told reporters on Monday, according to the BBC.

Right after the Kremlin airstrike, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha issued a call to arms to the democratic powers across Europe and North America.

In an urgent bulletin he posted on X, Sybiha warned the world that “Russia’s barbaric strikes at the Ukraine-Poland border” represent “Putin’s terror “knocking” directly on the doors of the EU and NATO. Russian barbarians are at your gate, dear partners.”

The West has to respond rapidly and forcefully to halt Putin’s brinkmanship, he said.

“Putin needs to understand that his barbarism will be met with decisive action that increases the cost of war for him to an unacceptable level.”

“Act now: throw the full weight of your sanctions at Putin’s aggressive regime. Make Moscow feel the consequences of its terror,” Sybiha urged.

“Not just half-decisions, but uncompromising, powerful steps. Full trade embargo. Full entry bans. Full sanctions on the military-industrial complex.”

“This is the only way to stop him.”

The Atlantic Council’s Peter Dickinson agrees, but adds that purely diplomatic measures are not enough to counter Putin’s exploding brinkmanship.

In light of the fact that Moscow’s missiles and killer drones now threaten not just Ukraine’s citizens and statesmen, but also Western leaders summiting with their Ukrainian counterparts, NATO allies should race to provide the blitzed country with PATRIOT missile interceptors, and with enough arms to finally defeat, rather than just stave off, Russia.

“Russia is now openly threatening NATO and the EU,” he says.

So it is imperative for the West to rapidly ramp up military support for the country.

“If Western leaders choose to do nothing, they will embolden Putin to escalate further,” Dickinson warns. “He will continue escalating until he encounters a resolute response.”

“Putin only understands the language of strength and views all hesitation or talk of compromise as an invitation to push harder.”