Rail sabotage is one of the Belarusian forms of grassroots action opposing the

Russian invasion of Ukraine On 24 February 2022, , starting the largest and deadliest war in Europe since World War II, in a major escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian War, conflict between the two countries which began in 2014. The fighting has caused hundreds of thou ...

. At the end of February 2022, the first reports appeared in the media about sabotage on Belarusian railways in order to disable manpower,

signalling control On a rail transport system, signalling control is the process by which control is exercised over train movements by way of railway signals and block systems to ensure that trains operate safely, over the correct route and to the proper timeta ...

equipment, and the transport of military materiel by rail for military operations on the territory of Ukraine.

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Signalling equipment was destroyed in three

regions of Belarus At the top level of administration, Belarus is divided into six regions and one capital city. The six regions are oblasts (also known as ''voblastsi''), while the city of Minsk has a special status as the capital of Belarus. Minsk also serves a ...

, and railway lines were blocked. As a result of these operations, the work of several branches of the Belarusian railway was disrupted, particularly in the south of Belarus. There have been some 80 acts of sabotage on Belarusian railways as of 12 April 2022, based on data from the Belarusian Interior Ministry. The most common form of damage is setting fire to the signalling equipment. This disrupts the lights on the railway system, forcing trains to slow to . A married couple set fire to the logs of railway tracks. Other acts of sabotage have involved the railway's workers themselves as well as hackers attacking the railway's computer system. The Deputy Interior Minister threatened to kill the partisans in a statement in early March. Shots were fired at people attempting to set fire to a signal box in late March. Setting fire to relay cabinets has proved a favourite form of sabotage, this stops the railway system knowing if part of a track is occupied, or not, by a train. In March 2022, the Belarusian section of the Gomel-Chernihiv-Kyiv railway was put out of service this way. The opposition's actions assisted Ukrainian forces in defeating the 2022 Russian offensive which aimed to conquer

Kyiv Kyiv, also Kiev, is the capital and most populous List of cities in Ukraine, city of Ukraine. Located in the north-central part of the country, it straddles both sides of the Dnieper, Dnieper River. As of 1 January 2022, its population was 2, ...

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In late April 2022, the Belarusian House of Representatives passed a law to apply the death penalty for sabotage.

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* Sly, Li
''The Belarusian railway workers who helped thwart Russia’s attack on Kyiv''
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'' (April 23, 2022) {{Belarusian opposition Belarusian and Russian partisan movement (2022–present) Belarusian involvement in the Russian invasion of Ukraine Protests in Belarus Resistance movements Opposition to Vladimir Putin 2022 in Belarus Rail sabotage Rail transport in Belarus Spillover of the Russian invasion of Ukraine 2022 crimes in Belarus Railway accidents in 2022 Railway accidents and incidents in Belarus 2022 disasters in Belarus

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