One accused against months of warnings: how the Investigative Committee "forgot" about defectoscopy, making an engineer the main villain of the accident

10:32, 18 апреля 2026 г.

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Journalists had anticipated, the charges for the crash of passenger train No. 302 Moscow — Chelyabinsk were brought against the "switchman" — the engineer.

Meanwhile, as our project has found out, employees at the track inspection station had reported a rail defect to management three times since February, but Russian Railways ignored the problem. And the Investigative Committee simply repeated the conclusions about the disaster that Russian Railways had hastily "drawn up," even without conducting any examinations.

According to the Investigative Committee’s press release, on March 27, 2026, the accused "while performing his duties, committed criminal negligence: having received a readout of the railbed defectogram for the section of the Kuibyshev Railway from the 888th km to the 1078th km, the engineer identified the defects present on it but did not initiate a secondary, more detailed inspection."
As a result, on April 3, 2026, at the 953rd km of the stretch between Putevoi and Bryandino, while passenger train No. 302 on the "Moscow — Chelyabinsk" route was traveling, 8 cars derailed due to a rail fracture caused by a defect that had not been detected during the defectogram readout.

However, as our project has already reported, back on February 7, the track inspection station at the 953rd km recorded a Group 2 defect on the right rail. The signal from the non-destructive testing equipment was reported to management. According to the guidelines, a secondary inspection and detailed examination of the rails should have been scheduled. But nothing followed.

On March 2 and 27, the track inspection station once again recorded rail defects. And once again, Russian Railways took no action. Then, on April 3, the passenger train derailed because of this defect.

However, for some reason, the investigation "noted" only the incident from March 27. Why? Because on February 7 and March 2, reports of the defects were made orally to management. But Russian Railways chose not to respond. Track workers said that the main directive from management right now is to cut costs on everything and anything. So signals about defects are simply ignored. They come up frequently, because the condition of the tracks is very poor. The broken R-65 rail was manufactured in 1986; on main lines, they usually last up to 25 years. This one was already 40 years old.

And on March 27, the inspectors and the engineer took no action, since there had been no response from management in the two previous instances.

Russian Railways management didn’t even come out to the disaster site, merely sending recovery trains. What’s more, according to our information, the state corporation initially tried to pin everything on "interference by unauthorized persons," as they’ve done more than once before.

When that didn’t work, they hastily, by April 7, conducted their own "investigation." Here are quotes from it:

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"03.27.2026, the network diagnostic infrastructure complex No. 519 (hereinafter — ERA DKI) No. 519, by the shift supervisor and ERA DKI engineer, in the presence of signals from two control channels at the fracture site requiring .... a secondary inspection within a 5-day period, did not issue a mark for the inspection.... The admitted rail fracture resulted from the grossest violations of normative document requirements by workers of mobile flaw detection units and the failure to act on defect signals during defectogram readouts."
And the Investigative Committee simply repeated Russian Railways’ "conclusions" in the charges, because in the two weeks since the disaster, it’s impossible to conduct any kind of examinations, let alone identify the guilty party in a case like a train crash.

Russian Railways is "on fire" — the Investigative Committee comes to the rescue.