The UK’s onetime Prime Minister Boris Johnson and General David Petraeus, ex-CIA director, say it was possible, but not probable, that Vladimir Putin set out to assassinate one of them with a drone strike that exploded on impact with a nearby train, close to Ukraine’s border with Poland.

Just days after a compact Russian jet-powered fighter, capped with explosives, smashed into the rail line that both were traversing, two of the world’s leading backers of democratic Ukraine set out their theories on the attack, and whether they had been specifically targeted for death by drone.

They spelled out their takes on the aerial ambush for the first ever during a meet-up with journalists and scholars , when I asked each statesman if he believed he had been deliberately placed in the Kremlin’s cross hairs.

Putin, a former KGB mastermind , has a long and well-documented history of assassinating his political enemies, with elaborate and theatrical state-ordered killings that stretch from an Arctic prison camp to London.

Prime Minister Johnson and General Petraeus relived and recounted their takes on the twin-drone operation during a roundtable hosted by the prestigious Atlantic Council, one of the top think tanks on defense and diplomacy in Washington, DC.

The captivating meet-up, titled “Did Russia intentionally target Western officials?” was conceived and convened by John Herbst, one of the globe’s foremost experts on Ukraine and Russia, their ongoing war, and their diametrically opposed political systems.

Once the United States Ambassador to Ukraine and a director at the National Defense University, Herbst now heads the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center, a microcosmic United Nations that attracts scholars and diplomats, presidents and premiers, from the world over.

In introducing Prime Minister Johnson, Ambassador Herbst pointed out that he had been “the first G7 leader to visit Kiev after the big invasion,” and this year “took a daring trip to the front line.”

I asked Prime Minister Johnson if he thought there was a chance Moscow might have aimed its drone strike precisely at his train, especially after Putin’s envoys to the UK had just issued a threat against all of Britain in retaliation for its supplying Ukraine with aerial weaponry.

Officers at the government-operated Ukrainian Railways stated in an official communique on the attack that Johnson’s train would have been at the exact spot on the rail line that was smashed in the drone strike if they had not ordered the train’s early departure, in reaction to reports of an imminent approach by a kamikaze fighter .

“If it was an attempt to get us, it was extremely incompetent,” Johnson told me.

The assault might have been aimed at terrorizing the high-level government and defense officials from around the world who had just met at an international security conference in Ukraine’s capital, and were returning to their home bases via the train line link to Poland, he said.

“You know, we we all go there - we behave in a very sangfroid way.”

As far as trekking into blitzed Ukraine, he says, “We treat it as though there isn’t a war on, and and maybe Putin felt it was time to send a little message.”

“But, you know, it’s certainly not going to deter us or stop us.”

“I think it was it was showing how rattled Putin is getting.”

Putin’s ever-escalating attacks on Ukrainian trains and civilians, he adds, are desperate and pathetic.

“You know there have been hundreds of locomotives struck over the last year or two.”

Prime Minister Johnson elaborated on these assaults later during the roundtable.

During his first trip to Ukraine just weeks after Russian tanks and troops crashed across the border in 2022, Johnson said, the trains were still relatively safe, even in the war-torn sectors of the country.

“The Russians couldn’t easily hit a moving train.”

“And that’s changed,” Johnson said.

“They’re much more aggressive toward the heroic Ukrainian railways, who have suffered, I think, you know, 1700 of their staff have been killed now in attacks on the railways.”

“The Russians are brutally attacking innocent civilian passengers, as well as people working on the railways,” in assaults that might one day be tried as war crimes.

The International Criminal Court has already prepared a globe-spanning warrant for Putin’s arrest on war crimes charges, and mounting attacks on civilians and rail cars could be added to those accusations.

Putin “is ratcheting it up,” Johnson said.

The Kremlin’s Supreme Commander-in-Chief, Johnson said, “wants to increase the terror levels” for targets ranging from citizens across Ukraine to any Western leader who dares to travel into the bombarded country.

In response to my question, General Petraeus, who, like Boris Johnson, was returning from the Kyiv defense conference when the miniature fighter jet struck the train right next to his, said the Russian drone pilots were unlikely to know he was on that particular rail car.

“I’m certainly sanctioned by Russia, was sanctioned early on,” Petraeus said.

“I’m sure that the prime minister was early on as well, and probably most of the people on his train were.”

But, he added, “I’m just not that confident that the Russians would have known that we were on that one.”

“I think there’s a higher chance that they might have known that there was a train full of former and serving government officials, the one that had Prime Minister Johnson on it.”

“But,” Petraeus added, “that one had rolled through 15 minutes earlier.”

“I just want to be very careful about jumping to a conclusion that this was a targeted operation against what they thought was his car or what they thought may have been carrying me and my team of fellow travelers.”

General Petraeus provided more details on the attack in response to questions posed by Ambassador Herbst.

“Our train had already gone through Ukrainian customs, and it was just a few kilometers from the Polish customs, so it was very close to the Polish border.”

“The train was halted in that location and evacuated three times due to warnings of drone threats before a nearby gas station and the locomotive of the train halted on the adjoining track were hit by Russian drones.”

Atlantic Council fellow Clara Kaluderovic, who was on the same train as General Petraeus when they were warned to run for cover as the twin drones approached, provided chilling details of the impending attack during the roundtable.

“This was my second time in the last four or five weeks being evacuated from a Ukrainian train,” she recounted.

“The first was under threat of ballistic missile attack, near the Kiev station, and the second was near the Polish border.”

“When we were past the Ukrainian checkpoint, we were paused on our train, and we were evacuated three separate times from the train.”

“We see one of the new Russian drones go right over our heads and slow down and hit on the far side of the train station, at which point everybody starts running much faster.”

“Our train was primarily women and children,” Kaluderovic said, “so this was very much not a military target. This was Ukrainian civilians.”

“Everyone starts running into the field to try to get as far away from something that would create shrapnel in case it were hit again.”

“We kind of took cover under a tree, everyone is shaking, they are crying, terrified.”

“And you can hear the Ukrainians shouting to each other to, please, for the love of God, hide under something, because the Russian drones can see you, and they hunt civilians.”

“And so they’re all trying to remind each other to lay flat, to take it seriously.”

“I have to say, I’ve spent a lot of time visiting the front. I’ve heard, you know, how it is to be hunted by drones.”

“But actually hearing the Shaheds [drones] flying overhead,” she recalled, “and knowing that they can see you and you can’t really do anything about it is really quite a terrifying first-person experience with the future of war.”

In a fascinating interview, after the riveting roundtable, via email, Ambassador Herbst told me: “My view is like Johnson’s.”

“It is possible, but unlikely, that the train was targeted intentionally.”

“Because Putin’s style is to amp up the pressure and provocations, but in an incremental way.”

“The idea is to demonstrate growing Western timidity in small steps to minimize the danger of pushback.”

“If a Russian drone murdered Johnson and other notables, it would be hard for NATO leaders to ignore or to respond feebly,” Ambassador Herbst predicted.

When I asked the ambassador what the U.S. and NATO should do about Russian’s growing belligerence and shadow attacks on the Western powers, including the very close calls with the trains of a onetime British prime minister and a former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, he said: “The answer is simple.” “We should respond quickly and with strength.”

“Russia’s goal with these provocations is to “persuade” NATO countries and others to stop supporting Ukraine; and to undermine NATO by undermining Article 5.”

Article 5 of the NATO Treaty states that an attack on any one NATO member state is an attack on all, and requires a collective defense by all 32 NATO partners.

“Prompt, strong responses to provocations will make it clear to the Kremlin that provocations are a failure,” Ambassador Herbst says.

“Russia has been conducting provocations for decades — especially against the Baltics.”

“Since the spring of 2024, Moscow has increased the number and the impact of the provocations because the NATO response has been to ignore/downplay them.”

But there are now signs of a strengthened NATO response to Putin’s ever-growing belligerence, he says.

“I am glad to say that NATO’s recent response to major Russian incursions in Baltic airspace — a major exercise in the area including Kaliningrad — was just the ticket.”

“The question is whether that is a one-off.”

“To reduce the number and intensity of Kremlin provocations,” the ambassador adds, “we must make such responses the pattern.”