Russian Federal Agency for Railway Transport

On April 21, the Russian Federal Agency for Railway Transport (“Roszheldor”) reported that the first container train, which traveled along the “railway network of Novorossiya” (ed. - this is how Russian propaganda calls the occupied territories of mainland Ukraine), had arrived in occupied Crimea.

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The report noted that the train had traveled from the Sverdlovsk Railway according to a specially developed schedule and had traveled more than 3,000 kilometers in less than 5 days. The final point of the route was the port of Sevastopol, where the containers were to be reloaded onto sea vessels. Details about the cargo were not reported.

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In addition, Roszheldor added that railway container transportation through the occupied territories of southern Ukraine has been launched on a regular basis since February 2025: it was then that Russian dictator Vladimir Putin instructed the Russian government and Russian Railways (Russian: Российские железные дороги) to consider the issue of connecting occupied Crimea with the central regions of the Russian Federation through the occupied territories in the south of mainland Ukraine.

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Since the end of winter 2025, according to Roszheldor representatives, “large-scale work” has been carried out in this direction, in which leading operators of the Russian container and sea transportation market took part. At the same time, it is stated that “active development” of transport and logistics routes using the stations of Russian railways – Kuibyshevskaya, Oktyabrskaya, Gorky and Severnaya – is currently underway: it is expected that these measures will ensure the export of Russian goods through the ports of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and Sevastopol.

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The scheme involves the so-called “Federal State Unitary Enterprise “Novorossiysk Railways”” (Russian: “Железные Дороги Новороссии”), registered under Russian law in occupied Donetsk. The infrastructure controlled by this “enterprise” was connected to the automated information systems of Russian railways. In addition, a transition to a unified transport document took place.

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Until recently, the occupation “governors” of the TOT of the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, Yevgeny Balitskaya and Vladimir Saldo, at different times stated that in the regions entrusted to them by the occupiers to “manage”, all the infrastructure was ready for the launch of passenger trains to the occupied Crimea, but their movement was impossible “for security reasons”.