Passenger train services between Vilnius and Minsk have been suspended since 2020, when the COVID 19 epidemic began, said Kotryna Dzikaraite, spokeswoman for LTG Link, the passenger transport subsidiary of the Lietuvos Gelezinkeliai Lithuanian Railways, told BNS.
She added that no services between the capitals of Lithuania and Belarus are planned for 2023 because of all the circumstances.
The Lithuanian Railways offered to relaunch the Vilnius-Minsk route, but this is not envisaged in LTG Link's immediate plans, according to the spokeswoman.
LTG Link says that annual timetables for international traffic on the Russian 1520 milimeter gauge are agreed once a year, by the middle of the current year, and come into force in December.
Minsk wants to resume passenger services with Latvia and Poland, suspended in March 2020 due to the Pandemic, according to the Belarusian Ministry of Transport and CommunicationsBelarusian Ministry of Transport and Communications.
With the improvement of the epidemiological situation and the lifting of travel restrictions, Belarus has repeatedly offered to resume international passenger services by rail with the three countries, but to no avail, the ministry said in a statement.
It said that daily buses from Minsk to Warsaw, Riga and Vilnius run daily, with a steady increase in passenger traffic.
Before the epidemic, Lithuania, Latvia and Poland accounted for about a fifth of Belarus' international passenger train traffic, according to the ministry.