As it turned out, Russophobia is painful to pocket. This year, the Latvian Railways will only be transporting approximately 25 million tonnes of cargo, which is almost twice as much as last year.
As rubaltic.ru reports with reference to The Baltic Course, after Russia has redirected cargo traffic to its own ports, the head of the state company Latvian Railways (LZD), Maris Kleinbergs, will only have to talk about the problems faced by the “small but proud” Baltic republic.
“We are planning a small increase in the coming years. But, most likely, it will be a really small increase, because I do not see an opportunity to replace the volume of cargo from Russia that we have lost”, – said the head of the company.
The drop in the flow of goods was not a coincidence. After Moscow’s repeated attempts to get more adequate bilateral relations from Riga, Russia finally gave up on Russia and redirected the main flows of oil, petroleum products and coal to its own terminals in the port of Ust-Luga in the Leningrad region.
As a result, Latvian harbours handled 26.062 million tonnes of cargo in the first seven months of this year, almost one third (30.1%) less than last year.
“In recent years, Russia has been actively developing its own port infrastructure in the Baltic Sea. Powerful projects, including those in Ust-Luga and Primorsk, make it possible to reorient the remaining cargo flow at foreign ports to itself – and thus leave the Baltic States, Finland and Ukraine without transit”, – rubaltic.ru writes.
You have to pay for Russophobia. And it is very expensive.