Putin called on railway workers to be vigilant: “The enemy is trying to reach out”

The President announced the construction of high-speed lines to Lugansk and Donetsk

The Russian railway network ranks first in the world in terms of intensity of use and carries up to a billion passengers a year, Vladimir Putin said at the 4th Congress of Railway Workers on Friday. The head of state announced the start of a decade of large construction projects: soon high-speed railway lines will stretch to Lugansk and Donetsk, and will also connect Moscow with Minsk. However, railway workers need to exercise due vigilance, the president urged: the enemy is trying to reach transport arteries in the east of the country.

“Today, over 1 million 300 thousand freight cars run on the railways, more than ever before in our entire history,” the president noted, speaking to railway workers. – Moreover, the Russian carriage fleet is one of the youngest in the world: the average age is about 13 years. And in the next three to four years, the renewal of the passenger car fleet will have to be completely completed.

The future of railways lies in high speeds, and the face of the railway industry is formed by passenger transportation, Vladimir Putin is sure. He called railway tourism an interesting and promising direction. The President noted that at first, when he learned about such a project, it seemed strange to him. But it turned out that this is a “wonderful product” that is very popular among citizens.

What’s also important is that trains in our country run on schedule, the head of state noted, and we also beat the queues at ticket offices. All this is thanks to new technologies: people issue three-quarters of their tickets online, and think tanks and “virtual coupling” technology are now responsible for managing the movement of trains.

The president called the coming decade a decade of great construction. The abbreviation BAM will come into use again. It is planned to expand the Baikal-Amur Mainline and the Trans-Siberian Railway, and at the same time modernize the highways and approaches to seaports, including the Azov-Black Sea and Caspian basins.

A large-scale project to create high-speed rail networks is also starting, Putin said. He emphasized that such highways will pass through territories where more than 111 million of our citizens live – that’s 80 percent of the country’s population.

The first step will be the high-speed route Moscow-St. Petersburg. Then the capital will be connected by new rails to Minsk, Voronezh, Nizhny Novgorod, Kazan, Yekaterinburg, Rostov-on-Don.

“In the future, of course, we will build them to Lugansk and Donetsk,” the president emphasized.

The format of cargo transportation will also change due to large construction projects. It is planned to create three corridors from north to south – in the European part of Russia, in Siberia and in the Far East. This new railway network will open up the opportunity to directly connect Russian transport routes with logistics hubs in the south and southeast of Eurasia.

Unemployment in the railway industry is definitely not a threat – the congress participants told Putin about this in full detail. Firstly, the railway prefers to forge personnel from a young age. Not even from school, but from kindergarten and further in technical schools and universities. And secondly, dynasties and many families with many children work on the railway.

The president has prepared good news for them – to extend the 20% contribution on the family mortgage and maintain a subsidy of 450 thousand rubles to repay the housing loan.

But what worries the head of state is the safety of the railway infrastructure. The enemy is trying to reach out to her. So the use of the military word “testing ground” – as the railway in the east of the country is called in industry slang – is now completely justified.

“We must keep in mind the conditions in which we all live today, the whole country lives,” Putin said. “The enemy is trying to reach the most important infrastructure facilities of this eastern training ground.” You have to be very careful. Of course, this is, first of all, the task of law enforcement special services and the National Guard, but I appeal to you – to everyone who works there – you need to exercise due vigilance, bearing in mind the conditions in which we live.