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Sanctioned goods account only for 30% of rail shipments to Kaliningrad — authorities

This volume can be quickly redirected to ships, Minister of Infrastructure Development of the region Evgenia Kukushkina pointed out

KALININGRAD, June 23. /TASS/. The goods that are subject to sanctions and are prohibited for transit to the Kaliningrad region, Russian exclave on the Baltic sea, from the country’s mainland account for about 30% of the total volume of shipments by rail, Evgenia Kukushkina, Minister of Infrastructure Development of the region, announced on Thursday.

She added that this share can be quickly redirected for delivery by sea.

"About 30% of sanctioned goods are transported by rail. This volume can be quickly redirected to ships," Kukushkina said.

She also called on the residents of the Kaliningrad region not to inflate artificial excitement for goods that are still limited in transit in order to avoid speculative price increases.

As the Kaliningrad Region Governor Anton Alikhanov said on June 17, Lithuanian railway officials had notified Kaliningrad that starting on June 18, they would restrict the transit of a number of goods from Russia proper to the Kaliningrad Region due to European sanctions.

Alikhanov also published a notice from the Lithuanian railway to customers. Trucks were not mentioned in the document but on Tuesday, there were media reports citing drivers of heavy trucks that they were no longer allowed to pass through the territory of Lithuania.

The governor noted that Lithuania’s actions are illegal and violate agreements, because when the Baltic country joined the EU, it guaranteed the preservation of transit to Kaliningrad.

Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov called the decision of Vilnius unprecedented and illegal. Lithuania assures that it has not introduced any unilateral or additional restrictions, but only "consistently applies EU sanctions.".