Goods limits reached
Lithuania again restricts Kaliningrad transit
08/11/2022, 10:18 am
Kaliningrad has no direct land connection to the rest of Russia. Goods are therefore delivered by rail. But since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the EU has restricted traffic. Lithuania is now announcing a transit stop again.
Lithuania has again announced restrictions on freight traffic to the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad. As the Lithuanian State Railways announced, the transit of certain Russian goods for which an upper limit has been reached will be suspended. Iron and steel products, wood, fertilizers and the coolant ethylene glycol are particularly affected. “If the transported quantity of certain goods reaches the specified annual average values, the transport requests will be rejected,” said the railway.
However, the local governor, Anton Alikhanov, said on Monday that Kaliningrad’s supplies were not secured. The agreement with the European Union prevented a “worst-case scenario”, but the current situation is “anything but normal”.
Kaliningrad is located on the Baltic Sea between Lithuania and Poland and has no direct land connection to Russia. In mid-June, EU member Lithuania restricted freight traffic between Russia and the exclave. Goods that fall under the EU sanctions against Russia could no longer be brought by rail from Russia to Kaliningrad via Lithuania.
Moscow called for the restrictions to be lifted and accused the EU of violating a 2002 agreement on Kaliningrad. After weeks of tension, the EU Commission made it clear in mid-July that there was no general ban on freight transport by train. Only the transit of sanctioned military equipment is prohibited. Lithuania then resumed transit traffic.
However, the EU’s guidelines on transit allow controls on transit volumes to ensure that the volume of goods transported to Kaliningrad corresponds to the needs in the exclave. Lithuania calculates this quantity using the average values of the past three years.