News dynamics

Russia's TASS news agency reported on April 14, citing news revealed by executives of the Russian Railway Company (RZD), that the company is working hard to deal with the problem of short-loading of coal, which has affected the company's operations and finances.

This problem is mainly concentrated on westward export routes such as the ports of the Baltic Sea, and the situation has been aggravated since the end of January.

Russian railway company executives said that in the first quarter of 2025, 30% of the coal declared for shipment to western ports was actually not delivered to the railway, which was a 14-fold increase compared with last year.

In the western direction alone, the daily lost shipments of Russian railways in March reached 150,000 tons, which means that 4.5 million tons of coal have been declared but not shipped.

Regarding the occurrence of this phenomenon, the Russian railway Company attributed it to factors such as market fluctuations and sanctions pressure.Coal producers said that differences in global coal prices and exchange rates are the cause of this phenomenon.

The above-mentioned sources pointed out that the customer declared the freight volume to the Russian railway Company, and the Russian railway Company also agreed to these applications. Therefore, the Russian railway Company deployed locomotives and locomotive crew for related transportation on the westward transportation route, but it did not come in handy, causing 72,000 open cars to be idle, which further affected the normal operation of the railway network.

During this period, although the Russian Railway Company managed to make up for these quantities by attracting additional metals and fertilizers in the northwest direction, it failed to fully make up for it.In April, this short-sleeved phenomenon still existed.

In response to this issue, the Russian Railway Company once again proposed to increase the fine for misrepresenting the shipment by 23 times, and to implement hierarchical penalties based on the time of cancellation of the order.

It is reported that the Russian Ministry of Communications supports this proposal, which is currently under review by the Russian Ministry of Justice and other federal executive agencies.The Russian Railway Company expressed the hope that the issue will be submitted for consideration at the spring meeting of the State Duma.