German lawmaker says his train escaped Russian drone attack by chance

German lawmaker Robin Wagener said Sunday he had been traveling by train on the same line hit by a Russian drone attack near the Polish border, warning that Russia was an “immense danger to Europe’s security.”

In a social media post, the Green lawmaker said he had just come from Kyiv, where air defense fire and drone attacks were more intense than on previous visits. “And this morning I traveled by train on the same route where this attack happened,” he wrote, sharing a video of the strike. “Sometimes chance decides whether you get through safely — after Russian terrorists have already decided on the attack.”

“Russia is an immense danger to Europe’s security. Too many of us have still not realized that,” Wagener wrote. “Our support for Ukraine in defending against it is still too hesitant.”

In the German parliament, Wagener serves on the Foreign Affairs and European Affairs Committees and is the Green group’s spokesperson on Eastern Europe. He also chairs the German-Ukrainian parliamentary friendship group.

German weekly Der Spiegel reported that a special train traveling from Kyiv toward Poland with former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and other European officials aboard was stopped early Sunday because of a drone threat. Guenter Sautter, one of German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s closest advisers, was among those on the train. Parts of it were evacuated after drone strikes in the area.

The security measure followed an attack on the same railway line. Early Sunday, a drone struck a passenger train traveling from Kyiv to Warsaw near the Polish border. The operator said the locomotive was hit. No one was injured.

Sautter, a foreign and security policy adviser at the Chancellery, had been in Kyiv with security advisers from Britain, France and Italy for talks with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s government on possible peace negotiations with Russia. He also attended the Yalta European Strategy conference on Saturday.