Finland suspending train services to Russia

Finland’s railway operator announced that it will suspend services between Helsinki and the Russian city of St. Petersburg starting Monday, Reuters reported.

This will terminate one of the few remaining public transportation routes to the European Union for Russian residents, according to the news wire.

Sanctions on Russia pushed the train operators in Finland to cease operations, as the country deemed it was no longer appropriate to operate services to anywhere in Russia, including St. Petersburg.

The trains incoming from Russia to the Finnish capital have been packed with Russian passengers since the invasion of Ukraine began and airspace was closed, making flights out of Russia to the Europe Union incredibly hard to come by, Reuters noted.

Russians, however, are still able to enter Finland by private car transport and vice versa.

Tytti Tuppurainen, Finland’s minister of state holdings, said that a major reason that the train service was maintained for so long was to allow Finns in Russia to return to Finland before closing the train operations between the two cities.

According to Reuters, Tuppurainen said, “Now it is evident that the situation has changed for the Allegro [trains] and the continuation of Allegro traffic is no longer appropriate from the point of view of the state owner.”