The Belarusian Railway continues to play the key role in the country’s transport network, ensuring stable domestic and international transport services. Annually, the Belarusian Railway carries over 100 million tonnes of freight. In the first six months of 2025, it transported over 45 million tonnes of cargo, 77 percent of which included the output manufactured by the Belarusian enterprises for the domestic consumption and for export. Shipments of fertiliser, cement, grain, vegetable oils, timber, and chemical goods are up. Sanction restrictions have not affected operations, but have instead boosted the development of new routes, such as transit across Russia using its ports and overland routes, connections with the Baltic state ports, and the Belarusian-Polish border crossings. Freight transport along the Northern Sea Route and to Central Asia is expanding at a fast pace. From January to June, freight transport was up, namely, to Turkmenistan (+120 percent), Tajikistan (+130 percent), and Kyrgyzstan (+110 percent compared to the same period in 2024).
Great emphasis is placed on the North-South Transport Corridor with the western, central, and eastern routes via Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan used at full capacity. Multimodal transportation is used along the Belarus-Russia-Kazakhstan-Uzbekistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan corridor: cargo gets transported by rail from Belarus to the Termez-Port Station operated by Uzbek Railways, and is then hauled by lorries to Afghanistan, from where it gets shipped by sea via the port of Karachi.
Key export flows (petroleum products, fertiliser, metals, and timber) have been recast to use the infrastructure of friendly countries. Cooperation is underway with the railways of Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Iran, Azerbaijan, and Turkmenistan, which forms a stable transport and logistics framework.
Speaking of passenger services, Belarusian Railway carried over 28 million passengers, with 93.1 percent of traffic within the borders of the country. International services involving the Russian Federation carried 1.7 million passengers (+14.2 percent), with Moscow and St Petersburg as the main destinations. Nearly 300,000 passengers used electric trains on the Mozyr-Minsk Route. The digitisation of passenger services continues with over 23 percent of tickets for regional trains now sold through terminals or a mobile app.
Comprehensive solutions for delivering Belarusian-made goods to far-flung countries have been developed with the participation of the shippers and transport and logistics companies. Typically, they include multimodal routes utilising rail, road, and sea transport. In the first half of the year, new destination countries for Belarusian exports included Myanmar, Bahrain, and Equatorial Guinea. Cargo exports to Morocco, Tunisia, Lebanon, and Mexico have been up as well. In early July, a memorandum was signed with China Railway providing for expanding the range of goods, dispatching long-haul container trains, and switching to paperless technology as part of the Belt and Road Initiative.
Digitisation enhances the mobility and service accessibility. The E-Transport system was used to digitise freight forwarding documentation and received the Magistral Awards 2024. Digital services are used to plan, monitor, and analyse train traffic, as well as to issue tickets and shipping documents for international transport. In 2025, the Belarusian Railway facilities will get improved with 37 local stations and 12 passenger platforms already upgraded.
