The list of sanctioned goods is constantly growing, but the lines of trucks waiting on the Latvian-Russian border are not decreasing, reports Latvian Radio. Currently there are more than a thousand trucks at each of the two Latvian border crossing points to Russia that remain open.
Irīna Golubova, Deputy Chief Customs Supervisor of the Terehova Customs Control Point, said: “If we are now talking about the actual topic of sanctions control, I can say that in about 25 cases this year, criminal proceedings in the field of sanctions were already initiated for deliberate actions to circumvent sanctions.”
The Terehova border control point had 1,020 freight vehicles waiting in line when Latvian Radio visited.
There are two parking lots, each for 200 trucks, but some vehicles are also waiting for their turn to on the side of the highway. When standing in line, drivers take a ticket and know approximately how long the waiting time will be, so they often leave their cargo right there at the border and return several days later.
On average, around 170 trucks cross the border in the direction of Russia per day. “But that figure has decreased considerably since the beginning of the war due to the control of sanctions, of course, we now spend much more time on document control, and drivers have to take that into account.”
Sandra Kārkliņa-Ādmine, deputy director of the Customs Administration of the State Revenue Service (VID), said that the reasons for the increase or decrease in queues on the Latvian-Russian border are not clear at the moment.
“If we used to be able to predict the queues, for example, we knew that before the New Year there would be huge queues and after the New Year there wouldn’t be that queue, then right now we have absolutely no possible predictions,” she admitted.
A driver named Kurmanbeko from Kyrgyzstan has been waiting for three days to cross the border at Terehova. He estimates that he has to stand for another 8-9 days, while his colleague stood for 15 days last time. He brings used car parts from Lithuania which he says are in transit through Russia to Kyrgyzstan.
On the same day, 1,000 trucks are also waiting to leave for Russia at the Grebņeva border control point. Unlike Terehova, the highway towards the border does not have an additional lane for parking, which means that the cargo literally stands on the road, and there are days when the line stretches 20 km long.
“We just arrived, we will have to stand for about 10 days,” says a long-distance traveler from Serbia who we met in the town of Kārsava, which is located near the border point. “We are standing on the road, what can we do, we came to drink coffee, buy products and return to the parking lot. There are two parking lots, but they are full.”
Not only long-distance drivers, but also local residents complain about the long standing at the border, because truck drivers are also parking in and around the town. Nevertheless, most have a degree of sympathy for the truckers. An electronic queueing system is in development but not yet implemented.
According to the report of Macroeconomic Forecasts published by the Bank of Latvia in October, EU countries in general still export goods worth more than 2 billion euros to Russia every month. And the issue of closing border points with an aggressor country, as Finland has done, for example, is not currently on the agenda of the Latvian government.
Seen a mistake?
Select text and press Ctrl+Enter to send a suggested correction to the editor
Select text and press Report a mistake to send a suggested correction to the editor
Tell us about a mistake
Source link : https://eng.lsm.lv/article/economy/transport/23.10.2024-thousands-of-trucks-still-waiting-at-latvias-border-with-russia.a573672/
Author :
Publish date : 2024-10-23 12:55:00
Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source.