Russia just bombed a civilian train in Ukraine and killed more than a dozen people

So let's talk about why this isn't a one-off.

This is at least the fourth Russian attack on a civilian train near Dnipro since September.

A conductor was killed on 8 September. People were hurt on a train to Sumy the very next day. A commuter train got hit on 18 September.

So this is a pattern. Not an accident.

And here's why trains matter so much right now. Ukraine's airspace has been shut to civilian flights since the invasion began, back in February 2022. Trains are one of the only ways left to move around the country.

They carry soldiers and supplies. But they also carry millions of ordinary people, every single day.

Ukraine's state railway, Ukrzaliznytsia, says hundreds of its own workers have been killed since the war started. Its chairman, Oleksandr Pertsovskyi, has confirmed this strike hit the station.

Now, what actually hit the train? Different outlets are calling it a rocket-propelled drone, others a jet-powered one. Nobody disputes that it was a drone. The exact type just hasn't been confirmed.

And there's more from this same morning. A separate Russian drone attack wounded a 15-year-old girl in Pavlohrad, a town in the same region.

Russia hasn't said anything about either strike. And Ukraine hasn't said whether the train was the actual target, or whether it was the station as a whole.

So here's what we still don't know. The final number of wounded. How bad the damage is to the train and the station. And whether 13 dead is the final number.

Medics were still working the scene when the first reports came out.

So for now, here are the facts. A civilian train, on a normal route between two Ukrainian cities. And 13 people on it are dead.