Malta Feels the Jolt: Russian Train Derailments Ignite Wheat Fears and War Debate

Valletta wakes up to news of war-on-rails: how a double train derailment in Russia is already rippling through Malta’s tight-knit streets.
The first Telegram clips—filmed by shaken conductors—reached Maltese phones at 06:14 CET: two freight trains, 1,200 km apart, jumping their tracks in Bryansk and Ryazan, flames licking winter pine forests, one driver dead, grain and diesel spilling like black blood across the snow. Within minutes, Russian officials blamed “Ukrainian saboteur squads”; within the hour, the story had climbed the islands’ WhatsApp chains, from Sliema fitness groups to Gozitan farming cooperatives discussing wheat prices.

For a country whose last railway closed in 1931, trains feel almost mythic—yet the shockwaves are real. Malta imports 82 % of its cereals via Black Sea routes that start life on those very Russian lines; every derailment nudges bread and rabbit-stew costs a cent higher. At the Is-Suq tal-Belt food market, 68-year-old baker Ċikku Pace crossed himself on watching the footage. “My father fled the siege of Leningrad,” he told Hot Malta, flour dusting his moustache. “We know what happens when supply chains snap. Yesterday I paid €28 for a sack of flour; today the importer says €31. Somebody always pays the price.”

University of Malta geopolitics lecturer Dr Maria Zahra argues the sabotage signals a dangerous new phase. “Drone attacks on Crimea were spectacular, but railways are arteries. If both sides start hitting civilian logistics, wheat and sunflower oil become weapons.” Zahra’s students—many on Erasmus exchange deals with Poland and Lithuania—now follow train-spotting channels the way their parents watched Italian football. “My thesis is on Malta’s food security,” 22-year-old Saviour Gatt said at campus canteen Zeffies. “This feels like reading tomorrow’s price list in today’s flames.”

Beyond economics, the incident stirs Maltese memory of our own wartime railway sabotage. In 1941, Italian frogmen disabled the Valletta-Salerno ferry link; the islands starved until Operation Pedestal convoys arrived. That narrative of fragile sea-lifelines is drilled into every schoolchild, and it explains why RNLA sailor Rebecca Camilleri, 29, sipping Kinnie in Msida marina, sympathises with Kyiv. “If someone blew up the Gozo ferry we’d be eating canned tuna in the dark. I get why Ukraine is hitting back, but I also get why Russian grain drivers are dying. War is a blunt knife.”

The Malta Catholic archdiocese has asked parishes to ring church bells for the deceased Russian driver at Sunday vespers—a gesture that sparked fierce debate on TikTok. “Pray for civilians, not invaders,” one top comment reads, gathering 2,400 likes. Yet parish priest Fr Joe Borg defends the move. “A driver is a worker, not a politician. Bell-ringing reminds us violence always ricochets.”

Meanwhile, Maltese hauliers fear insurance surcharges on overland routes that already detour around Ukraine. “Every container from China now costs an extra $400 war-risk premium,” says Kevin Fenech, CEO of local freight forwarder MedTrans. “That’s new tiles for three kitchens, gone.”

In the chess game of sanctions and sabotage, Malta’s size is no shield. The double derailment may have happened 3,000 km away, but it reaches our dinner tables, our university halls, even our church towers. As Dr Zahra puts it, “In a globalised pantry, a loosened rail bolt in Ryazan can empty shelves in Rabat.” The lesson for the islands? When grain burns on frozen Russian tracks, the smoke drifts south, carrying the scent of higher bread prices, sharper political divides, and the eternal Maltese question: how to stay neutral while your stomach is tied to everyone else’s war.