{"id":432319,"date":"2026-05-19T19:04:19","date_gmt":"2026-05-19T09:04:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.railfreight.com\/?p=71236"},"modified":"2026-05-19T19:04:19","modified_gmt":"2026-05-19T09:04:19","slug":"russia-doubles-price-of-rail-freight-to-historically-dependent-eu-neighbours","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/?p=432319","title":{"rendered":"Russia doubles price of rail freight to historically dependent EU neighbours"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Russia is doubling rail freight tariffs for transport to Estonia, Latvia and Finland. The targeting of these countries is probably no coincidence, considering their historical dependence on Russia for the rail freight market.<\/strong><br \/>\n<span id=\"more-71236\"><\/span>In particular, the measure will apply to transportation of goods in the direction of the land border crossings with Latvia, Estonia and Finland, as well as with Belarus (in the case of onward travel to Latvia and Estonia), write Russian media. The measure does not apply to the third Baltic country, Lithuania, or transit to Russia\u2019s exclave Kaliningrad.<\/p>\n<p>The rail freight market in the Baltic countries and Finland has historically been tied to trade flows to and from Russia. This is the case not only due to their proximity, but also because the rail networks were initially built to be connected to Russia. With the introduction of sanctions, many of these freight flows collapsed, leaving the rail freight operators with severely declined transport volumes. The rail freight volume in the Baltics dropped from over 130 million tonnes to 52 million tonnes over the course of only five years.<\/p>\n<p>It seems \u2014 speculatively speaking \u2014 plausible that Russia is targeting these countries on purpose. The rail freight operators in the region are vulnerable: they have already had to reduce their workforces and go through restructuring. The Estonian operator Operail was sold off to a private party, because the state could not sustain its losses.<\/p>\n<div class=\"flourish-embed flourish-chart\" data-src=\"visualisation\/29034679\"><script src=\"https:\/\/public.flourish.studio\/resources\/embed.js\"><\/script><noscript><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/public.flourish.studio\/visualisation\/29034679\/thumbnail\" width=\"100%\" alt=\"chart visualization\" \/><\/noscript><\/div>\n<h2>Another setback to make things more challenging<\/h2>\n<p>It has been a challenge to weather the \u2018sanction storm\u2019 with the little transit freight that remains for the operators. By doubling prices for transport to these countries in particular, Russia may seek to discourage transport in this direction. That could further harm the companies as more freight might disappear from their networks.<\/p>\n<p>The news about Russia\u2019s doubling of tariffs coincides with new bleak performance data coming in from Latvia. During the first four months of 2026, the rail freight volume in the country decreased by 17.9% year-on-year. In total, 2.47 million tonnes of freight was transported during this period.<\/p>\n<p>International transit through Latvia for the initial four months of 2026 reached 1.96 million tonnes, representing a 20.3% year-on-year collapse. Meanwhile, domestic transport volumes also saw a downturn, declining by 7.3% to a total of 506,000 tonnes. Transit freight fell to 1.64 million tonnes, which represents a 14.7% year-on-year decline.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"readmore\">\n<div class=\"readmore-item\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.railfreight.com\/business\/2025\/01\/22\/operail-once-again-transporting-freight-from-russia\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.railfreight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/Operail-freight-train-128x128.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"readmore-thumbnail\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<div class=\"readmore-info\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.railfreight.com\/business\/2025\/01\/22\/operail-once-again-transporting-freight-from-russia\/\" class=\"readmore-title\">Operail once again transporting freight from Russia<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/aside>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Russia is doubling rail freight tariffs for transport to Estonia, Latvia and Finland. The targeting of these countries is probably no coincidence, considering their historical\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[72,1747,1578,340,1748,471,78,47,13498,309],"tags":[12634],"class_list":["post-432319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-estonia","category-finland","category-latvia","category-lithuania","category-news","category-rail-freight","category-rail-news","category-rail-tariffs","category-russia","tag-railfreight"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432319","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=432319"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432319\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":432322,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432319\/revisions\/432322"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=432319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=432319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=432319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}