“Since 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic started, passenger train journeys Vilnius-Minsk have been suspended. Taking into account all the plans for 2023, communication between the capitals of Lithuania and Belarus is also not planned, ”said Kotryna Dzikaraitė, a representative of LTG’s secondary passenger transport company LTG Link, to BNS.

According to her, Lithuanian Railways has received an application from the Belarusian Railways for the possibility to renew the Vilnius-Minsk route, but LTG Link has no plans to do so in the near future.

The annual timetables for international traffic in the Russian 1520 mm gauge are coordinated once a year – until the middle of the current year and come into force in December, says LTG Link.

Minsk would like these trips with Latvia and Poland as well. They were terminated in March 2020 due to a pandemic, according to the Belarusian Ministry of Transport and Communications.

“As the epidemiological situation improves and traffic restrictions are lifted, Belarus has repeatedly offered to resume international passenger traffic (by rail with the three countries – BNS), but without success,” she said in a statement.

“Now there are daily buses from Minsk to Vilnius, Riga and Warsaw, which have a constant flow of passengers,” the ministry added.

She notes that before the pandemic, Lithuania, Latvia and Poland accounted for about one-fifth of all international passenger trains in Belarus.