At least 3 killed, 28 injured in passenger train derailment in Russia's Bryansk Oblast following bridge collapse, officials say
At least 3 people are dead and another 28 injured after a train derailed in Russia's Bryansk Oblast overnight on May 31, following the collapse of an overhead road bridge, Russia's Emergency Situations Ministry claimed.
Photos and videos posted on social media appears to show damage sustained to the train after an impact with the bridge. Russian Telegram channel ASTRA reported that a total of 379 people were on board the train at the time of derailment, around 10:45 p.m. local time.
Preliminary reports suggest that explosions were heard in the Vygonichsky district of Bryansk Oblast ahead of the impact, and Moscow Railways, a subsidiary of state-run Russian Railways, claimed that the bridge collapsed due to the "unlawful interference in transport operations."
No further information was provided as to the cause of the bridge collapse, and the full extent of the damage was not immediately clear.
The Kyiv Independent cannot verify claims made by Russian authorities. Ukraine's military has not commented on the reported derailment.
The passenger train reportedly runs from the town of Klimovo in Bryansk Oblast to the Russian capital of Moscow.
Bryansk Oblast, located in Russia's far-west, borders Ukraine's Chernihiv and Sumy Oblast, and has been the target of various Ukrainian strikes.
Ukraine's intelligence agencies as well as Ukrainian partisan movements have previously been involved in sabotage attacks on Russian railways, disrupting the transport of military cargo toward the front line. There is no immediate indication either was involved in the train's derailment.
Read also: As 50,000 Russian troops amass, Ukraine's Sumy Oblast braces for potential large-scale offensive
We've been working hard to bring you independent, locally-sourced news from Ukraine. Consider supporting the Kyiv Independent.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
New York Times
12 minutes ago
- New York Times
New Reports on Russian Interference Don't Show What Trump Says They Do
The Trump administration in recent weeks has released a series of reports intended to undermine the conclusion reached by intelligence agencies before President Trump's first term that Russia had favored his candidacy in 2016 and sought to improve his chances of winning. That assessment, an unclassified version of which was made public in January 2017, has long infuriated Mr. Trump. In disclosing the reports, he and his team are proclaiming that President Barack Obama and his team torqued the intelligence analysis process to deliberately discredit Mr. Trump's election. The administration has coupled that case with overheated and attention-grabbing claims. Mr. Trump has accused Mr. Obama of treason, and his top officials have made criminal referrals about national security officials under Mr. Obama — all as the administration is trying to distract supporters who are angry about its broken promise to release the Jeffrey Epstein files. Still, even if the administration's use of the reports is wildly overstated, some of the information has not been made public before. It provides some messy details about how the intelligence community assessment was hurriedly produced during Mr. Obama's final months in office. The assessment said that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia had ordered a multifaceted information operation targeting the U.S. presidential election, including by hacking and releasing Democratic emails and by seeding social media with messages promoting Mr. Trump and denigrating his rival, Hillary Clinton. The assessment also attributed three motivations to Mr. Putin. Two have not been seriously challenged: He wanted to undermine public faith in democracy and to damage Mrs. Clinton, who until election night was widely seen as the next U.S. president. But Mr. Trump and his allies have long chafed at the third asserted goal — that Russia also hoped to help him win. Their case seeking to undermine the assessment has focused on the unusually rushed and tightly controlled process to complete the document, in which senior leaders like John O. Brennan, the C.I.A. director, and James B. Comey, the F.B.I. director, played a more direct role than would is typical. And their criticism has focused on two main elements. One is the role played by the so-called Steele dossier. The dossier, a compendium of later-discredited claims about Trump-Russia ties compiled by a former British spy, was part of a Democratic-funded political opposition research effort. The other is how the intelligence agencies used information from a well-placed U.S. mole in the Kremlin, whom the C.I.A. later spirited out of Russia. The Dossier The government had already warned the public before the 2016 election that Russia was behind the hacking and dumping of Democratic emails. In early December 2016, after Mr. Trump's surprise victory, Mr. Obama directed the intelligence community to produce a comprehensive analysis of Russia's election meddling, drawing on all available sources of information. The terms of that mandate appear to have led the top officials overseeing the process to include material that might otherwise have been excluded. The Steele dossier is an example. It had been known that the F.B.I. thought the dossier should be used because the standard was to draw on all available sources, while C.I.A. analysts objected because the sourcing for the claims was then unknown. Ultimately, agency leaders negotiated a compromise and put a summary of it in an annex appended to the assessment. Mr. Brennan has publicly said the Steele dossier material was not incorporated or used in the assessment itself because of the C.I.A.'s concerns. In 2017, he told Congress that the dossier 'was not in any way used as a basis for the intelligence community assessment that was done.' The newly disclosed material complicates that narrative. For one, it showed that Mr. Brennan internally defended appending a summary of the dossier to the assessment after C.I.A. analysts resisted the compromise, too. For another, the material has revealed that the classified version of the assessment alerted readers to the existence of the annex. It did so in a fourth bullet point under the judgment that Mr. Putin aspired to help Mr. Trump's chances of winning. 'For additional reporting on Russian plans and intentions, please see Annex A: Additional Reporting from an F.B.I. Source on Russian Influence Efforts,' the bullet point said. Mr. Trump's allies have argued that this sentence means the information from the Steele dossier was incorporated into the assessment itself. 'Counting On' Mr. Obama's mandate to take account of all available information also led the C.I.A. to draw upon some raw intelligence that it might otherwise not have seen fit to publish, or disseminate for analysts to use. The newly disclosed material shows that after Mr. Obama's direction, Mr. Brennan ordered a 'full review,' including the publication of any relevant intelligence that had been collected before the election but not disseminated. The C.I.A. then published 15 additional reports containing raw intelligence it had previously gathered. Three became support for the assessment's judgment that Mr. Putin's motives included wanting to bolster Mr. Trump's chances of winning the election. C.I.A. officials had previously held back each of those three, according to a newly declassified 2020 report by Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee, because of tradecraft concerns about the information within them. It said the assessment did not flag those worries. The most important of them was something the U.S. mole in the Kremlin had said: that Mr. Putin made public the hacked Democratic emails after deciding that Mr. Trump, 'whose victory Putin was counting on, most likely would not be able to pull off a convincing victory.' The 2020 House committee report said the statement had originally not been disseminated because analysts were not sure what the mole had meant or who specifically the mole had heard that from. The report criticized the assessment for interpreting that phrase to mean Mr. Putin hoped Mr. Trump would win, without flagging that its reading was disputed. Separately, a review of the procedures and analytic tradecraft that went into the assessment, commissioned by John Ratcliffe, Mr. Trump's current C.I.A. director, argued that the C.I.A. and the F.B.I. should not have put the judgment that Mr. Putin was trying to help Mr. Trump at 'high confidence' when only one source explicitly and directly backed that finding. But the review did not challenge the judgment itself as the best reading of the available evidence, instead praising the National Security Agency's view that it merited 'moderate confidence.' And the review acknowledged that analysts might infer support for the judgment from other evidence, including the public behavior of senior Russian officials and state-controlled media — and logic. 'Most analysts judged that denigrating Clinton equaled supporting Trump; they reasoned that in a two-person race the trade-off was zero-sum,' it said. 'This logic train was plausible and sensible, but was an inference rather than fact sourced to multiple reporting streams.' Contrary Findings The reports released by the Trump team are limited to evaluating the use of intelligence that was available in December 2016, and do not address subsequent developments. That includes Mr. Putin's statement at a news conference with Mr. Trump in Helsinki, Finland, in 2018, in which he said through a translator that he had indeed wanted Mr. Trump to win the election 'because he talked about bringing the U.S.-Russia relationship back to normal.' Others who have had access to the previously classified information and files from that period have reached different conclusions. John Durham, a special counsel appointed in Mr. Trump's first term who hunted for a basis to fault the actions of law enforcement and intelligence officials early in that investigation, already scrutinized the drafting of the 2017 intelligence assessment and did not criticize anything about it in his final report. And in a five-volume 2020 report, the Republican-controlled Senate Intelligence Committee — led by then-Senator Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican who is now Mr. Trump's secretary of state and national security adviser — reached its own conclusion that Russia's motivations had included aspiring to improve Mr. Trump's chances of winning. Indeed, citing one aspect of the interference — the social media operation by a Russian entity known as the IRA — the Senate report suggested that the 2017 intelligence assessment's judgment was, if anything, understated. 'However, where the intelligence community assessed that the Russian government 'aspired to help President-elect Trump's election chances when possible by discrediting Secretary Clinton and publicly contrasting her unfavorably to him,' the committee found that IRA social media activity was overtly and almost invariably supportive of then-candidate Trump, and to the detriment of Secretary Clinton's campaign,' the Senate report said. Overstated Claims The finely tuned distinctions and marginal questions raised by the newly available information in the documents sharply contrasts with the overstated and sometimes sensationalized claims Trump administration officials keep making about them. This month, when Mr. Ratcliffe rolled out his review, he also blamed the assessment for establishing a narrative that the Trump campaign may have colluded with Russia, leading to the inquiry led by Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel. 'They stamped it as Russian collusion and then classified it so nobody could see it,' Mr. Ratcliffe told The New York Post. 'This led to Mueller. It put the seal of approval of the intelligence community that Russia was helping Trump and that the Steele dossier was the scandal of our lifetime.' In reality, the Mueller investigation grew out of an F.B.I. investigation that began in July 2016, five months before the assessment, and its basis was a lead from the Australian government, not the Steele dossier. Mr. Ratcliffe also made a criminal referral of Mr. Brennan that accuses him of lying to Congress, leading the Justice Department to open an investigation. Last week, Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, released an 11-page timeline and some underlying documents that misleadingly conflated different types of hacking. In a Fox News appearance, she cited the newly declassified existence of 2016 intelligence reports assessing that Moscow was not trying to hack into vote-tallying machines as somehow undermining the fact that Russia hacked and released Democratic emails to affect the election. Ms. Gabbard also said that the materials used for her timeline were proof of a 'treasonous conspiracy' by Mr. Obama and his national security team, and that she, too, was making a criminal referral. Mr. Trump reacted gleefully, reposting materials on social media based on her timeline and remarks, including a fake video of Mr. Obama being led off to prison. On Tuesday, Mr. Trump said, 'Whether it's right or wrong, it's time to go after people. Obama's been caught directly.' The next day, it came to light that Attorney General Pam Bondi had told Mr. Trump in May that his own name appeared in the Epstein files. Hours later, Ms. Bondi announced the creation of a 'strike force' to assess the information provided by Ms. Gabbard.
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
Ukraine anti-corruption chief says his agency faces 'dirty information campaign'
By Dan Peleschuk KYIV (Reuters) -Ukraine's top anti-corruption investigator said on Friday that he did not expect attempts to derail his agency's work to end, despite an abrupt U-turn by President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on curbing their independence that fuelled rare wartime protests. Semen Kryvonos, director of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU), said he was taken aback by attempts this week to curtail his agency's fight against graft but did not name those who may have been behind the legislation. "Everyone united around the idea of ruining our independence," Kryvonos told Reuters in an interview in Kyiv, referring to parliament passing the controversial measures. "This was a shock for me - how much demand had built up to destroy us." He spoke a day after Zelenskiy sought to defuse tensions by submitting legislation restoring the independence of NABU and its sister agency, the Specialised Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office (SAPO). Thousands of protesters took part in protests in Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities this week after lawmakers fast-tracked a bill granting a Zelenskiy-appointed general prosecutor power over the two bodies. The move had also threatened Kyiv's ties with the European Union and Western donors which have been a critical source of financial and military support during Russia's war in Ukraine. Kryvonos applauded Zelenskiy's reversal, but said NABU and SAPO remain a high-priority target for vested interests aiming to stymie their closely watched efforts to clean up. Parliament will consider Zelenskiy's new bill in a special session next week. But Kryvonos worries corrupt actors will step up a "dirty information campaign" already being waged against NABU on widely read anonymous Telegram channels, casting the agency as slow or ineffective. He did not identify the exact sources of resistance to his agency's work, saying only that they are "various representatives of the government, various financial groups". "Everyone who is offended by NABU and SAPO will be pushing out this message," Kryvonos said. 'SYSTEMIC WORK' AND THREATS Since Russia's February 2022 invasion, Ukraine has stepped up a campaign to eradicate the pervasive graft that has plagued its political culture for decades. Stamping out corruption is both critical to Kyiv's bid to join the EU and its effort to erase a legacy of autocracy and Russian rule. NABU and SAPO, launched with Western support after a 2014 revolution toppled a pro-Russian president, have levelled charges against lawmakers and senior government officials. In recent months, Kryvonos's agency has uncovered huge real estate schemes in the capital Kyiv and accused a then deputy prime minister of taking a $345,000 kickback. Kryvonos suggested such efforts had led to a sweeping crackdown this week that paved the way for the rollback of NABU's and SAPO's powers. Two NABU officials were arrested for suspected ties to Russia and nearly 20 other agency employees searched over lesser alleged infractions in a campaign critics said went too far. "All of this was a result of systemic work by NABU and SAPO, especially over the past half-year," he said, adding that he had also received "a huge amount" of threats. Despite winning a hard-fought victory this week, he said resistance was still widespread enough across the political landscape to pose a serious challenge. He cited the controversial law that had been supported by most of Zelenskiy's political party as well as opposition lawmakers and those associated with former pro-Russian factions. Political elites, Kryvonos said, "need to stop considering us as accept us as an important part of state institutions." Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Yahoo
US, China confront each other on Ukraine at United Nations
By Michelle Nichols UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) -The United States told China at the United Nations on Friday it should "stop fueling Russia's aggression" in Ukraine, as China accused Washington of trying to shift blame and spark confrontation. Acting U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Dorothy Shea urged all countries, specifically naming China, to stop exports to Russia of dual-use goods that Washington says contribute to Russia's war industrial base and enable its drone and missile attacks on Ukraine. 'Beijing's claim to have implemented strong export controls on dual-use goods falls apart in the face of daily recovery of Chinese-produced components in the drones, weapons, and vehicles that Russia uses against Ukraine,' Shea told a meeting of the 15-member U.N. Security Council on Ukraine. China did not start the war in Ukraine, is not a party to the conflict, has never provided lethal weapons, and has always 'strictly controlled dual-use materials, including the export of drones,' China's deputy U.N. Ambassador Geng Shuang responded. 'We urge the U.S. to stop shifting blame on the Ukraine issue or creating confrontation and instead play a more constructive role in promoting ceasefire and peace talks,' he told the council. Reuters reported on Wednesday that Chinese-made engines are being covertly shipped via front companies to a state-owned drone manufacturer in Russia, labeled as "industrial refrigeration units" to avoid detection in the wake of Western sanctions. "If China is sincere in calling for peace, it should stop fueling Russia's aggression," Shea said. Solve the daily Crossword
