Lithuania limits admission of trucks from Kaliningrad - Russian customs

KALININGRAD. Jan 26 (Interfax) - The line of trucks headed to the Russian-Lithuanian border has been steadily growing, the press service for the Kaliningrad regional customs told Interfax on Friday.

"The line of trucks headed to Lithuania has been steadily growing at the Chernyshevskoye checkpoint over the week. As of Friday morning, about 80 trucks were waiting for admission, and another 25 were parked on the neutral ground after being cleared by the Russian side," the customs said.

It explained the situation with slow work of the Lithuanian customs and inexplicable breaks in the admission of vehicles.

In particular, Lithuania did not clear a single truck between 5 a.m. and 8 a.m. on Friday, without giving formal explanations to the Kaliningrad regional customs.

For its part, the Federal Agency for the Development of State Border Infrastructure (Rosgranstroy) said on the Telegram channel created to monitor the electronic line of trucks at the Chernyshevskoye checkpoint that the admission of vehicles by the adjacent country was quite limited. Only six trucks were cleared in the past three hours, it said.

The lag behind the time reserved for trucks crossing the border in the electronic line is 102 hours or more than four days.

As reported earlier, there have been no truck lines in Chernyshevskoye at the border with Lithuania since late December 2023. Back then, tensions persisted for several weeks, as up to 250 vehicles were simultaneously waiting for admission into Lithuania.

The electronic line for trucks headed to Lithuania was introduced at Chernyshevskoye on September 1. The mechanism falters sometimes because of delays on the other side.

Lithuania has been tightening control over cargo transit to and from Russia and Belarus in recent months due to the European Commission's sanctions against both countries.

Currently, only trucks are cleared in Chernyshevskoye at the Russian-Lithuanian border. Truck traffic to and from Russia has decreased significantly under the anti-Russian sanctions.