Russian Train Derailed In Crimea Due To Sabotage 

Another Russian train derailment has occurred, this time in Crimea on Thursday, in what a number of Russian sources are describing as an act of sabotage. 

Crimean Railways said in a statement that the disaster was caused by “interference from outside persons” – however there was no specific mention of the exact sabotage event in the initial press release, whether a blast or vandalism of the tracks. 

At around 8am, some eight railroad cars toppled off the track outside the south-central Crimean city of Simferopol, Crimean officials have said.

The freight train was reported to be carrying grain. Many sources say that it was due to an improvised explosive device (IED) being placed under the track.

The New York Times has since described that it was “explosions” that derailed the train, in the latest in what’s been a series of such train derailments in Russian territory of late.

⚡️Crimean Sabotage:

An IED was laid under the railway track near the village of Chistenkoye, near Simferopol pic.twitter.com/zpxjIgyLcc

— War Monitor (@WarMonitors) May 18, 2023

Amid these sabotage events, Ukrainian officials while not directly owning up to being behind them, have suggested a military purpose for the freight trains…

Meanwhile, Andriy Yusov, a spokesman for the Ukrainian Defense Intelligence, claimed that the train may also have been carrying heavy weapons and military equipment due to which the tracks broke.

Over the past month, there have been multiple train derailments in Russia’s Bryansk region due to explosives, in what the Kremlin has condemned as a Ukrainian cross-border sabotage campaign directed against its infrastructure. Oil facilities have also been hit by drones.

Reuters reported early this month based on local sources that “An explosion derailed a freight train for the second day in a row in a Russian region bordering Ukraine on Tuesday, sending both the locomotive and some cars off the tracks, authorities said.” In that particular prior incident, at least 20 cars were derailed.