Russia Announces Large High-Speed Rail Network, Domestically Built
Sept. 21—Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin announced Sept. 16, at a “Strategic Session on Rapid Transport System Development,” that President Vladimir Putin has approved “the development scheme of a high-speed travel” network, whose length “will exceed 4,500 kilometers (2,800 miles).”
Mishustin asserted, “First of all, we are building a backbone road network that will interconnect all Russian regions. We are building railway lines, including in the Far East.”
The domestically built trains, which will run at up to 400 kph, will connect Moscow to St. Petersburg (679 km); to Yekaterinburg via Kazan (1,740 km); to Ryazan; to Sochi (through Rostov); to Krasnodar; to Minsk, Belarus, and potentially to Berlin and other cities.
The flagship line will connect Moscow and St. Petersburg. In 2006, Siemens and Russian Railways signed an order for eight high-speed trains, with a 30-year service contract. The lead train for the route is the Sapsan (Peregrine), which Siemens designed and manufactured, with a travelling speed of 250 kph (155 mph), although its design allows for a potential upgrade to 350 kph. But after Russia launched invaded Ukraine in 2022, Siemens pulled out of the Russian contract. That spurred Russia to design its own high-speed train unit—one more example in which the Collective West’s boycott and sanctions against Russia forced Moscow to accelerate the development of its own scientific and technological capabilities.
On Dec. 15, 2023, Russian Minister of Transport Vitaly Savelyev announced that the ministry had formed the main parameters to implement a financial and organizational model. Estimates placed the cost of the Moscow-St. Petersburg line at more than 2.3 trillion rubles ($27.6 billion). The line will be built by VSM Two Capitals LLC, a Russian company, using both government and private funds, on concessionary terms. The Russian government plans to allocate more than 300 billion rubles from the National Welfare Fund at 1% interest in 2025, and 328 billion rubles in subsidies in the period between 2024 and 2038. The Russian VTB Bank, Sberbank, and Gazprombank will be involved in providing the remaining funding. Ural Locomotives, a subsidiary of Sinara Group, will build the trains, with design from the Railway Transport Engineering Center.
Construction of the Moscow-St. Petersburg line began in 2024 and is scheduled to be completed in 2028. The current journey takes about four hours; the new system will cut it by one to one-and-a-half hours. (The travel time from Moscow to Yekaterinburg will be cut from its present time of 15 hours to 6 hours.)
When the total project is completed, Russia’s high-speed rail trackage will exceed that of France and Germany, and become the second largest in Europe after Spain.