Innotrans 2026 is in full swing in Berlin. On Tuesday 22 September, high-profile rail leaders came together for a summit. Among the speakers were Evelyn Palla, CEO of Deutsche Bahn (DB), as well as Oleksandr Pertsovskiy, CEO of Ukrainian Railways (UZ). Palla shared her plans for the future of German rail, whereas Pertsovskiy issued a warning based on Ukrainian experiences.
Palla started her speech with a sober remark. Her company is not delivering consistently enough: delays and disruptions are all too frequent. Moreover, customers are not getting the quality they rightfully expect. The problems are frustrating, including for freight, Palla acknowledged. A single delay can ripple through the network, which will sound all too familiar to the rail freight industry.
Germany has a major rail assignment to complete, in Palla’s view. The maintenance backlog has been building up for years, decades even. More trains started running on the network while the network aged.
“We cannot make up for this in a short time”, admitted Palla. “Germany is now providing more funding for infrastructure renewal than ever before, and we are thankful for this commitment.” Still, DB needs to make efficient use of the available resources, the DB CEO added.
The DB 2035 strategy
For that reason, DB wants to reinvent itself and follow a new strategy, Palla revealed. The “DB 2035: A railway we can be proud of”-strategy is supposed to return reliability and quality. More than anything, one principle underpins the strategy. DB will move at two different speeds, where all things that can be improved on the short term will be improved as quickly as possible. This includes, for instance, customer information.
By contrast, the fundamental renewal of the infrastructure network will take much longer. In 2026 alone, there were 28,000 construction sites on the German network, explained Palla. Despite this, the process will take years. “The negatives will be felt now, the benefits later”, predicts the DB CEO.
She also identified resilience as a goal. As a part of this, Palla reiterated her early September announcement that DB will conduct fewer rail overhauls annually. There will be fixed construction windows in the timetable to improve predictability and reduce “randomness”.
The need for resilience, evidenced by Ukraine
The CEO of UZ, Oleksandr Pertsovskiy, was quick to stress said resilience once he took the floor immediately after Palla. Ukraine has been dealing with a new development in the war: moving trains are now being targeted by “cutting-edge tech with the intent to kill”, the CEO explained.
“The latest challenge is thus with the precise targeting of trains”, Pertsovskiy added. “They are trying to stop our system.” Traction is proving to be the weakest point.
In response to Palla’s vision for the future of DB, Pertsovskiy offered some advice on UZ’s behalf. “Keep the resilience and safety pillars in your strategies”, he said. DB would do good to invest enough in protecting the system, because “there might be players willing to disrupt it”.
Ukraine as a manufacturer and supplier base
Ukraine, meanwhile, has been innovating to deal better with the new threat to trains. UZ has an underground monitoring centre, which delivers a real-time understanding of what happens above the tracks.
Moreover, the company reviews its safety protocols regularly. “Earlier, when trains were moving, they were considered safe. But when a moving train was targeted in late 2025, that was a hard lesson”, explained Pertsovskiy. Safety stops are the countermeasure, even if that is not helping the timeliness record of the operator.
Pertsovskiy, like his German counterpart, also has a vision for the future of rail. “We will never stop, even if they want us to do so”, he commented and applause followed. UZ’s dream is to connect Berlin to Lviv, the CEO added. Moreover, he hopes that Ukraine will be a big market for manufacturers and the supplier base. “We would be happy to be part of that supply chain”, Pertsovskiy concluded.