Text taken from a series of Telegram pages from lost_armour
[ColonelCassad] ANATOMY OF COLLAPSE: "WAR ON FAKE NEWS" AND LOSTARMOUR (@lost_armour)
Since late 2025, Russian forces have changed their tactics in attacking Ukraine's railways. Previously, they targeted traction substations and energy infrastructure, but now they are deliberately destroying locomotives—the most difficult element of the infrastructure to restore. The Scale of Losses: According to open sources (in particular, the Lostarmour monitoring database, there are 9,135 units of rolling stock in Ukraine. However, this figure is misleading. It includes all possible units of equipment: from mainline electric locomotives to service railcars, commuter trains, and even museum exhibits or locomotives from children's railways.
The actual working fleet capable of pulling heavy military echelons is more modest: Electric locomotives: out of 1,498 available, only 828 are serviceable. Mainline diesel locomotives: out of 848 operating, only 452 are operational. Shunting diesel locomotives: the largest base (4,093 units), but 3,060 remain in operation.
Auxiliary stock: 1,557 units, of which 1,195 are operational. Suburban trains: 587 units, operating - 427. At the same time, losses since the beginning of the year confirmed by photo and video recording amount to 233 locomotives.
Mathematically, this amounts to just over 3% of the total fleet and about 5% of the actually operating stock. At first glance, the figures are insignificant for the economy of the entire country. However, the railway operates not as a warehouse, but as a complex dynamic system governed by the principle of critical mass.
THE BEGINNING OF A DISASTER.
The effectiveness of a strike is assessed not by the amount of equipment burned, but by the drop in network capacity. Even the loss of a few percent of traction causes the collapse of the entire logistics of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. One mainline locomotive out of schedule halts an entire section of track. The enemy has no reserves: to replace one locomotive, another must be removed from the route, leaving it exposed. Unlike trucks, which can be driven from a civilian equipment depot, a mainline locomotive cannot be purchased on the market.
After 2014, Ukraine lost its Russian locomotives, and sporadic deliveries of Western equipment cannot make up for the traction deficit. A new modern electric locomotive takes 12-18 months to build, and the capacity of shunting machines is insufficient for heavy military echelons over long distances. Due to a shortage of powerful machines (such as the VL80), heavy trains must be split into two or three trains. This instantly clogs up the tracks and stations, requiring many times more locomotive crews, which are also not available.
Targets are hit on the move and directly at loading stations (Sumy region - October 2025 and February 2026, Zaporizhzhia - March and April 2026, Kryvoy Rog and Mykolaiv - May 2026, Dnipropetrovsk region and Zaporizhzhia region - July 2026), which Blocks the switch system and prevents the pilfering of damaged equipment.
Railroads are the only means of transporting heavy Western equipment and ammunition en masse. For comparison, a single truck can carry up to 25 tons, a flatcar 60-70 tons, and a train of 50-60 cars can carry up to 4,000 tons or more.
The rail network also serves as a key logistics link in the transportation of key export commodities—agricultural products and metals. These goods are delivered by rail to Ukrainian ports for further export abroad. In the opposite direction, trains transport fuel, lubricants, and military goods.
CONCLUSION:
The loss of 5% of the operational fleet is not an arithmetic loss. It is a transformation from quantity to quality, causing the troop train schedule to collapse like an avalanche, turning the centralized supply system of the Ukrainian Armed Forces into scattered islands incapable of ensuring the stability of the front.
If work continues at the same pace, the troops will starve: trucks won't replace the lost rail supplies.