According to the results of the first half of 2025, freight turnover on the rail network in Eastern Russia increased by 2.6% compared to the same six-month period last year and rose to 2.6 million ton-km per day. The results were announced at a briefing for shippers on 2 July.

The increase was also due to a rise in the number of trains passed in virtual coupling mode by 20.6%, taking the figure up to 43,300, heavy-duty trains, up by 15.2% to 18,600, and connected trains, up by 27.9% to 5,000.

In connection with the general reduction of the freight base across the network, the Company continues to work with excess fleet together with the wagon owners. In total, 211,000 unclaimed empty wagons have been removed from the transportation process.

This made it possible to reduce the wagon turnover on the Russian Railways’ infrastructure by 2 days, a decrease of 12.4%, while also increasing the delivery speeds of loaded wagons by 46.7% and the proportion of shipments that arrived on time by 3.7 percentage points.

As the Deputy Head of Russian Railways Dmitry Murev noted, the failure to present cargo on agreed requests continues to have a negative impact on freight transportation indicators.

For this reason, the total shortfall in June amounted to 22.4 million tons. About half of this, 11.7 million tons, was accounted for by the southern direction, including 2.7 million tons of oil, 2 million tons of construction materials, and 1.4 million tons of coal.

In the North-West direction, 5.8 million tons were not presented, including 1.2 million tons of oil, 1.1 million tons of coal and 800,000 tons of fertilizers. In the Eastern direction, the shortfall amounted to 4.9 million tons, including 2.3 million tons of coal, 700,000 tons of oil, and 300,000 tons of timber.

Dmitry Murev emphasised that Russian Railways is interested in every additional ton of loading and is ready to cooperate promptly with shippers to agree on specific transportation parameters.