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Belarusian, Russian rail operators sign cooperation agreement

MINSK, 3 February (BelTA) – Belarusian Railways and Russian Railways signed an agreement on cooperation in rail traffic and use of railway infrastructure between interchange stations, BelTA learned from the Belarusian Railways press center.

“The agreement has been signed to keep up to date with the international legislation in rail transportation, to ensure its enforcement in rail transportation between interchange stations of Belarusian Railways and Russian Railways, and to promote further digitization of the shipping process,” the press center said.

The cooperation agreement was signed by Head of Belarusian Railways Vladimir Morozov and Director General – Chairman of the Board of Russian Railways Oleg Belozerov during a web-based meeting. Vladimir Morozov and Oleg Belozerov also took stock of the cooperation between the two companies in 2020 and discussed joint activities for 2021.

Container transportation on the China-Europe-China route has been developing rapidly in line with the multilateral agreement between seven participants and the UTLC project (the joint project of railway operators of Belarus, Russia, and Kazakhstan aimed at organization of container transportation in the EAEU). The countries launched new routes of container trains through the Belarusian-Polish border checkpoint and Russia’s Kaliningrad Oblast, and through seaports of Kaliningrad Oblast.

Oleg Belozerov stressed that Belarusian Railways is a reliable partner in the development of transit transportation on the route China-Europe-China. Last year, more than 550,000 containers (TEU) were transported across Belarus, which was up by 60% over 2019.

For his part, Vladimir Morozov noted that the year 2020 was difficult for freight business. Despite this, in 2021, Belarusian Railways will keep its transit transportations tariffs at the level of 2020.

According to him, it is important to intensify efforts to expand the network of routes of container trains, transfer to fully digital legally valid document management, and set up an exemplary “digital transport corridor”.

Speaking about international passenger traffic, Vladimir Morozov said that Belarusian Railways is ready to resume passenger traffic between Belarus and Russia.

The parties also expressed readiness to launch a new partner project to operate a daytime high-speed train between Minsk and Moscow.

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