Drones Knock Out Rail Power, Halt Trains, and Damage Key Highway Bridge in Russia’s Taganrog

Drone strikes disrupted railway operations in Russia’s Rostov region overnight on November 15, damaging two electrical substations and a key highway bridge near Taganrog. The attack cut power to a section of the railway network, halted train services, and forced authorities to close a major road connecting southern Russia with Russian-occupied Ukrainian territories.

According to Rostov region Governor Yury Slyusar on November 15, one of the damaged substations supplied electricity to railway infrastructure in Taganrog.

The attack knocked out power lines along the railway section between Taganrog-Passazhirsky and Mikhailovka stations, forcing authorities to suspend train traffic. A second electrical substation in Taganrog’s Shubin neighborhood was also hit, triggering a fire at the facility.

The disruption extended to the nearby Neklinovsky district, where a bridge crossing railway tracks at kilometer 64 of the R-280 highway sustained damage to its road surface.

Authorities closed the bridge to traffic and redirected vehicles through Taganrog and the village of Pokrovskoye.

The R-280 highway connects Rostov-on-Don with temporarily occupied territories in southern Ukraine, serving as an important transportation corridor for civilian and military logistics.

According to the governor, Russian air defenses intercepted or destroyed approximately 50 drones overnight across Rostov-on-Don, Taganrog, and seven districts of the Rostov region. The reported interception figures could not be independently verified.

Earlier, Ukrainian long-range drones struck a major Russian oil transportation hub in the Samara region, setting several storage tanks on fire. A separate attack damaged a military aircraft maintenance hangar, an aviation fuel storage tank, and a command facility at the Lipetsk-2 military airfield, according to Ukraine’s General Staff.

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