November 9, 2024: Russian forces in Ukraine have, over the last few months, been suffering ammunition shortages and increasingly unreliable railroad deliveries. Part of the reason for this was the August 2nd Ukrainian attack into Kursk province. The Ukrainians destroyed several key bridges during their incursion and Russia has not been able to assemble the materials and manpower to make repairs. The Russian railroad system is also in bad shape. Over two years of economic sanctions sidelined hundreds of locomotives and reduced track and signal system maintenance. One thing that increased was Ukrainian sabotage efforts against Russian railroads. The sabotage is often carried out by Russians fed up with Putin’s foolish and costly war. Russia has been arresting, prosecuting and jailing some of these saboteurs. This does not appear to diminish the number of sabotage incidents.

For the first time since Russia invaded, Ukrainian forces are firing more artillery shells than the Russians. Russia is more dependent on railroads than other industrialized nations. That’s because Russia never built a large network of highways. It was too expensive. Instead long-distance commercial and military land transportation was handled by the government owned and operated railroad. There are 128,000 kilometers of track on which 800,000 uniformed railroad workers operate over 19,000 locomotives and over 800,000 railway cars. In addition there are 65,000 kilometers of private railways built, maintained and used by various industries.

Russia has lost a growing number of employees to recruiters for the military. Despite the importance of the railroads, the Russian military will grab any military age railway workers it can and turn them into soldiers for the Ukraine conflict. The government also uses fake ads seeking workers for the railroads. Those who respond are then easier to grab and put into the army. Several million Russians have left the country to avoid military service. Many of these men have completed their one year of conscript service and don’t want to be forcibly mobilized into the military to die in Ukraine. The end result is a railroad labor shortage.

The most recent railroad crisis is a shortage of ball bearings. Since 2019 there has been a decline in ball bearing production which has, in the last year, been overcome. There are still ball bearing shortages and the sanctions imposed on Russia makes it more difficult for them to get all they need. Ball bearings are used in everything that moves on wheels as well as most machinery with moving parts. Ball bearings come in different sizes and degrees of durability. Railroad ball bearings are among the most durable, come in several different sizes and require regular maintenance, especially lubrications, to continue functioning efficiently.

Ukrainian sabotage teams in Russian territory disrupt railroad movement by damaging key elements of the railroad signals and communications systems. This makes the railroads less reliable and often leads to accidents that derail supply trains and block further use of that line until the wreckage is removed and the rails are repaired. Ukraine has even been able to get operatives deep inside Russia to damage the Trans-Siberian Railroad, which is currently used to move weapons and munitions and North Korean soldiers from North Korea to Ukraine.

Ukraine continues to concentrate on Russian logistics, using long range missiles and GPS guided aircraft bombs to destroy Russian supplies that have been stockpiled for troops to use. Russia responded by moving the stockpiled supplies farther from the front lines and, when possible, storing them in underground bunkers. Such bunkers are great in theory, but in practice there are not many of these bunkers and supply stockpiles often end up out in the open, on pallets and covered by tarps.

Meanwhile, the railroad situation in Ukraine is not ideal. Ukraine and the NATO countries have different gauge railroads. Europe uses what is known as Standard Gauge. Gauge means the distance between the two rails. Standard gauge rails are 1,455mm apart. The Russian gauge is wider with the rails 1,524mm apart. Until 1991 Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union which means Ukrainian railroads are Russian gauge. To deal with this problem, Ukraine is building a transshipment point in the west Ukraine town of Uzhhorod which is on the border with Slovakia and near the Hungarian border. Here there are cranes that will quickly lift standard cargo containers from Russian gauge flatcars and load the containers onto European Standard Gauge flatcars. Passenger trains have a similar arrangement where passengers can disembark and walk a short distance to trains with a different gauge.

Ukraine plans to build some European Gauge rail lines to major transportation centers in several Ukrainian cities. Eventually Ukraine wants to convert all its major rail lines to Standard gauge. This will make it easier to handle trade with Europe. If there’s another war with Russia, the Russians will not have all those Russian gauge rail lines available to quickly move troops and supplies into Ukraine on Russian gauge railroads. Instead, the Russians will have to use roads or capture Ukrainian railroad engines along with passenger, cargo, and flatcars so they can use Ukrainian European Standard gauge railroads.