Russia will close seven rail border crossings to Estonia, Latvia and Finland starting today, 1 July. A government order to that end, signed by Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, was published on 30 June. The closures may have to do with the opening of a German-Dutch command centre in the Baltic region.
The impacted checkpoints include Vyborg, Vartsilya, Lyuttya, Saint Petersburg-Finlandsky, and Svetogorsk on the border with Finland. The Pechory-Pskov crossing on the Estonian border will also close, as well as the Pytalovo checkpoint on the border with Latvia. Neither passengers nor freight can pass through these locations.
Russia has not specified the duration of the closures. They do not play a significant role in Russian trade anymore. “We, in principle, naturally, have no interaction at this level in export-import traffic”, commented Pavel Ivankin, president of the Russian National Research Centre of Transport and Infrastructure, in Russian media.
“Due to the sanctions, no one is coming to us, and we are not sending anything to the other side. But a certain amount of transit passes through us, including from Kazakhstan and China. Accordingly, they go to Finland, they go to the Baltics, and so on.”
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Trains can still go to Lithuania through Belarus, and a border crossing with Latvia remains open, according to Ivankin. A complete closure of all border crossings would have a larger impact, he says, because Russia would lose those transit flows.
The closure of the border crossings could be a response to the opening of a new NATO corps headquarters on the Estonian-Latvian border under German-Dutch command.