Ukrainian Railways regains pre-crisis levels of passenger traffic, increases traffic to EU 2.1 times

MOSCOW. Jan 11 (Interfax) - Ukrainian Railways (Ukrzaliznytsia, UZ) carried 25 million passengers by long-distance trains, reaching the pre-crisis numbers of 2022, Ukrainian media outlets said with a reference to UZ's press service.

Passenger traffic to the member states of the European Union grew to 2.1 million people in 2023, and it is 2.1 times as many as in 2022, the chairman of the UZ board, Yevgeny Lyashchenko said.

"We have carried a record amount of passengers to the EU countries, but the demand remains high. This is why we're working on expanding international routes and increasing seats," he said.

In addition, about 450,000 passengers were carried under group requests.

UZ said in early 2023 that it had carried 16.9 million passengers and evacuated another four million in 2022. A total of 1.4 million passengers were transported to the EU countries and back, it is ten times more than the numbers recorded in 2021, and another 600,000 were evacuated to the EU.