Against the backdrop of a decrease in loading on the railway network in 2025, the issue of concluding "ship or pay" agreements has become particularly relevant. Russian Railways is confident that the carrier should not suffer losses when the shipper refuses a previously agreed application at the last moment, which happens quite often.
Over the past six months, 127.2 million tons of cargo have not been presented. This led to lost revenues for Russian Railways of at least 200 billion rubles.
In June 2025, the total shortfall amounted to 22.4 million tons, of which about half (11.7 million tons) fell on the southern direction. In this volume, 2.7 million tons were oil cargoes, 2 million tons were construction cargoes, and 1.4 million tons were coal. In general, loading on the Russian Railways network in June amounted to 89.3 million tons, which is 9.2% less than in the same period last year. In the first half of 2025, 554.5 million tons of cargo were shipped, which is 7.6% less than in the same period of 2024.
Despite general trends, fertilizer loading increased by 4.8% compared to the first half of 2024, mainly due to exports (+27.9%). There is also an increase in coal transportation (+2.3%) and non-coal cargo (+3.5%). However, demand in the domestic market reduced the loading of construction cargo (-19.7%), ferrous metals (-25.8%), and scrap metal (-31.8%).
Earlier www1.ru reported that Russian Railways will launch additional freight trains thanks to the HSR.
Read related materials:
The Ministry of Transport is working on the construction of a new high-speed railway to new regions
Putin was shown a model of the Russian high-speed train: what is known about the HSR project
