Putin deploys 20-mile ‘Tsar Train’ with 2,100 freight cars lined up to make ‘mobile wall’ to stop Ukraine counterattack
VLADIMIR Putin has deployed a near 20-mile-long blockade of freight cars to stop any future Ukrainian counterattacks.
Dubbed a "Tsar Train" the menacing wall has been called "extremely difficult to damage, move or blow up" as Russia continues to fight in Ukraine.
Russian forces have managed to build up over 2,100 freight railcars into the 19-mile-long train, reported Ukrainian open-source intelligence tracker DeepState.
And is thought to have been created for Russia to use as a defensive line against any future Ukrainian attacks.
DeepState wrote: "This is a very specific engineering structure, the effectiveness of which is difficult to assess.
"The idea is clear—an obstacle to the advancement of the (Ukrainian) Defense Forces."
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The massive barrier stretches between Olenivka and Volnovakha in Ukraine's occupied Donetsk Oblast region.
Analysis by a team of experts at the Institute for the Study of War have been tracking the train ever since construction got underway.
Eerie satellite images last week revealed the huge line full of railcars constructed by Russian troops.
The seemingly mobile wall is believed to have been built over the past nine months - starting in July 2023.
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Deepstate continued: "It can be considered as a separate line of defense, because it is extremely difficult to damage, move or blow up a 30-kilometer-long mass of metal, and the movement of equipment through such an obstacle without breaking through the corridor is impossible."
The railway line connecting the two areas is around 6km from the frontlines and the ISW say it sits southeast of the village of Novomykhailivka at its closest point.
Here it is located on the actual bloody battlefield after it was left relatively quiet and the Russians started construction.
Russian troops have recently made minor gains in the area, according to reports.
The region of Donetsk has seen heavy fighting since the war broke out almost two-years-ago as the area continues to be caught up in bloody battles over territory.
The ISW also suggests that "the Russians could have assembled the train for other purposes as well", outside of a defensive cover.
The latest on the Ukraine war
AFTER almost two years, the war in Ukraine continues to rumble on as fears of an all-out World War Three between Russia and the West keep on going.
Since the beginning of the war, Russia has lost approximately 385,230 personnel, 6,310 tanks, and 11,757 armoured combat vehicles, Ukrainian army officials said.
Putin's army also reportedly lost 9,195 artillery units, 974 multiple launch rocket systems, 663 air defence systems, 332 warplanes, and 324 helicopters.
The list goes on - 7,100 drones, 1,846 cruise missiles, 23 warships, 1 submarine, 12,231 motor vehicles and fuel tankers, and 1,452 units of special equipment.
As the tyrant is estimated to have seen more than 300,000 troops died since he declared war in February 2022.
Ukraine previously claimed to have sunk a Russian warship - with 50 sailors on board - using kamikaze sea drones.
Footage shared by Ukraine's ministry of defence showed the dramatic moment its boats sped toward Putin's £55million Black Sea missile ship "Ivanovets" and sent it up in flames.
In another major scalp for Ukraine, two of Putin's most crucial spy planes worth £290million were shot down last month.
One of the Russian dictator's £260million spy planes disappeared and a £30million bomber jet was set on fire after Ukrainian forces shot them out of the sky above the Azov Sea.
However, despite Ukraine's success Russia has no plans to slow down in their assaults.
Earlier this month, Putin gathered 40,000 troops, 500 tanks and hundreds of howitzer artillery guns to unleash hell on Kupyansk.
On January 15, a leaked military report revealed Putin's possible step-by-step plan to bring the West to the brink of World War 3.
The secret docs detail the despot's possible "path to conflict" which reaches its climax in the summer of 2025 on "Day X" when half a million Nato and Russian soldiers will face each other.
According to reports, Putin is desperate to secure a significant victory before the rubber-stamp elections in March that are all but certain to secure his brutal reign over Russia until at least 2030.
But Zelensky has shaken up his cabinet as he appointed a new commander-in-chief in Colonel-General Oleksandr Syrskyi - a hardened warrior who has overseen most of Ukraine's major battlefield victories.
Russia, which launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine almost two years ago, has voiced outrage in the past when Ukrainian attacks have killed civilians in Donetsk and other neighbouring areas.
But Russia's own campaign of air strikes and heavy shelling has killed thousands of Ukrainian civilians.
The governor of the Ukrainian-controlled part of the region, Vadym Filashkin, said Russian attacks killed at least two people at two locations west of the city of Donetsk in January.
At Kurakhove, about 28 miles from Donetsk, shelling killed a 31-year-old man and injured another person.
While a 62-year-old man was killed and a 70-year-old man injured at Krasnohorivka between Donetsk and Kurakhove, he said.
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"I call on everyone who remains in Donetsk: evacuate!" Filashkin said in a post on the Telegram messaging app.
Donetsk is one of four regions in Ukraine's east and south that Russia claimed to have annexed in late 2022 in a move condemned as illegal by most countries at the U.N. General Assembly.
