The ban on the transportation of goods through Russia to the Baltic countries will have a negative impact on road freight through Belarus, and may also lead to a reduction in imports of European-made goods to Russia, say experts interviewed “Kommersant”.
According to Aleksey Misailov, business development director for FM Logistic in Russia, such a restriction could mean a potential closure of checkpoints on the Latvia-Russia border, since the traffic from Lithuania to Kaliningrad, as well as from Estonia to Russia, is insignificant. “However, we must not forget that Poland-Belarus, Lithuania-Belarus checkpoints operate at limited capacity, passing about 40% of possible vehicles,” Misailov notes. RF, will further aggravate the situation with road transport through Belarus. According to my estimate, the queues can grow by an additional two to three days. Freight rates could also go up due to the washout of the fleet of Latvian carriers.”
The founder of VIG Trans, Igor Rebelsky, says that a strict ban on transit through the Baltics could affect the ability for imported goods from Europe that are not under sanctions to enter the territory of the Russian Federation in sufficient quantities. “The Baltics as a whole, and especially Lithuania, are a concentration of huge warehouse complexes and seaports through which cargo is transited to Russia,” he explains. . And in the event of a blockade of the Baltic states, Poland will become a monopoly in this direction.” According to Rebelsky, this will lead to the dependence of Russian imports on Poland as a transit country, an even more rapid increase in transportation prices and a reduction in imported European-made goods in Russia.
July 5 Governor of the Kaliningrad Region Anton Alikhanov toldthat as a response to the ban on the transit of certain goods through Lithuania, the authorities of the region propose to completely ban the import and export of goods to Russia through the Baltic countries.
“That is, we preserve Kaliningrad transit, and the opportunities for Kaliningrad producers to move through the Baltic states, but we limit the rest of the territory of the Russian Federation and cut off from the Baltic states,” explained he, noting that for the Baltic states this will be a “crushing blow”, since their ports and railways work only in conjunction with Russia, and 30% of the Lithuanian economy “can be closed the next day after such a decision.”
Alikhanov called this measure an “extreme response”, also saying that there were four points in total in the proposals of the regional government on the response measures of the Russian Federation to the restriction of transit to Kaliningrad by Lithuania.