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When Russian troops first flown across the Belarusian border into Ukraine in what they assumed would be a lightning strike on Kyiv, they were intending to rely on the region’s extensive rail network for supplies and reinforcements.
The Russians did not take into account the railway saboteurs of Belarus.
In the early days of the invasion in February, a covert network of railway workers, hackers and disgruntled security forces took action to disable or disrupt railway links connecting Russia to Ukraine via Belarus, wreaking havoc on Russian supply lines.
Attacks outside Belarus have garnered little attention amid the drama of the Russian offensive and the bloody aftermath of Russia’s humiliating withdrawal. Analysts say fierce Ukrainian resistance and tactical errors by the Russian military were enough to thwart Russia’s plans.
But the saboteurs of the Belarus Railway can at least claim a role in fueling the military chaos that quickly surrounded the Russians, leaving the front lines without food, fuel and ammunition within days of the invasion. The soldiers left.
The head of Ukrainian Railways, Alexander Kamyshin, expressed his gratitude to Ukraine for the Belarusian sabotage. “They are brave and honest people who have helped us,” he said.
Members of the activist network said the attacks were simple but effective, targeting the signal control cabinet essential to the functioning of the railways. For days on end, train movement was paralyzed, forcing the Russians to attempt to repatriate their troops by road and intercept the infamous 40-mile military convoy north of Kyiv. Contributed to the snar-up.
Emily Ferris, a research fellow at the London-based Royal, said there is no independent media reporting on how much chaos can be attributed to sabotage and to poor logistics planning by the Russians, particularly from Belarus. Joint Services Institute. But without automatic signalling, trains would be forced to crawl at a slower speed and the number of people traveling on the tracks at any given time would have been severely restricted, she said.
“Given the Russian dependence on trains, I am sure this contributed to some of their problems in the north. This would have slowed their ability to move,” she said. “They could not move into Ukrainian territory and their Stripped of supply lines because they had to rely on trucks.”
Belarusian activist and trade unionist Yuri Ravoi said the attacks also bought time for Ukrainian soldiers to prepare an effective response to the Russian invasion, who fled Poland under threat of arrest during anti-government protests, which kicked off in 2020. shook Belarus.
“I can’t say we were the most important factor, but we were an important brick in the wall,” he said.
The saboteurs drew inspiration from an earlier episode in Belarusian history during World War II, when Belarusians blew up railway lines and train stations to disrupt German supply lines in protest against the Nazi occupation. The railroad war, as it is known, is hailed as a moment of victory for Belarus, taught in schools by resistance fighters as the most successful of the tactics that helped Soviet troops drive out the Germans. made easy.
Eight decades later, Russia’s presence in Belarus has fueled discontent. The deployment of thousands of Russian troops to Belarus in preparation for the invasion of Ukraine triggered widespread domestic protests and rekindled opposition networks formed during the 2020 protests against Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, Hannah, a Belarusian journalist living in exile in Lithuania. Lyubakova said.
This second rail war has taken a more benign form than its predecessor. Ravoi said that the parties did not want to cause casualties. So he focused his attacks on damaging equipment to prevent the railway from working.
“We didn’t want to kill any Russian military or Belarusian train drivers. We used peaceful means to stop them.”
He and other Belarusians who were involved in organizing the attacks declined to reveal the exact details of how the attacks were carried out and by whom, citing the need for confidentiality and concerns for the safety of railway partisans as the sabotage. The doers are known loosely.
There are three main groups, which represent railway workers, security force defectors and cyber experts, said Lt Col Alexander Azarov, a former security officer living in Warsaw, who heads a security force group called Bypol.
Railway workers sympathetic to the partisans have leaked details of Russian movements and locations of major railway infrastructure to a group called the Railway Workers’ Community, which shares them on Telegram channels. Azarov said supporters are linked to carry out the attack, but there is no formal chain of command.
“Our movement is not centralised,” he said. “It’s not that the resistance has a leader. It’s horizontal, with dozens of groups working on the ground.”
The third group, the Cyber Partisans, is made up of exiled Belarusian IT professionals who have carried out several cyber attacks on the Belarusian government since joining in 2020.
Beginning on 26 February, two days after the invasion began, a succession of five sabotage attacks against signaling cabinets brought train traffic to an almost complete halt, said Sergei Voitekhovich, a former railway employee based in what is now Poland. There is a leader in the community. of railway workers.
By February 28, satellite images began to appear of a 40-mile convoy of Russian trucks and tanks apparently headed from Belarus to Kyiv. Within a week, the convoy had come to a complete standstill as the vehicles ran out of fuel or broke down.
A packed train to Kyiv, with anxious and hopeful returnees
Since then the Belarusian authorities have launched an intense effort to stop the attacks and hunt down the saboteurs. The Interior Ministry has ruled that damaging railway infrastructure is an act of terrorism, a crime punishable by 20 years in prison.
Activists say dozens of railway workers have been randomly detained and their phones searched for evidence that they were in contact with partisans. At least 11 Belarusians accused of participating in the attacks are in custody, according to human rights groups.
In early April, security police apprehended three alleged vandals near the town of Bobruisk and shot them in the knees. State television broadcast footage of men covered in blood, bandaged on their knees, and claimed they had been shot while resisting arrest.
Azarov said the shooting had a chilling effect on the sabotage network. Belarusian troops are patrolling and drones have been deployed to monitor railway lines. “It has become very dangerous to attack,” he said.
But by the time of the police firing, Russia’s withdrawal from the area around Kyiv was in full swing and the Kremlin had announced that it would refocus its military efforts to capture Ukraine’s east. The Pentagon says most Russian troops entering Ukraine from Belarus are now in the process of redeploying to the east.
“We believe that the Russians have given up taking Kyiv, it is a result of our work because the Russians did not feel as safe in Belarus as they had hoped,” said Frank Viakorka, spokesman for Belarusian opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya. “Thousands of Russian soldiers didn’t get food, they didn’t get fuel, and they didn’t get equipment in time.”
Now a new era of rail war may begin. In recent days railway workers have posted telegram photos of damage to signaling cabinets along Russian railway lines being used to transport troops to eastern Ukraine. The attacks could not be independently confirmed, but Voitekhovich claimed members of his railway network were involved. “There are open borders between Belarus and Russia,” he said.