Due to contractual reasons, Finland will not be able to transfer four Allegro high-speed trains to Ukraine, which Kyiv requested during the visit of Prime Minister Sanna Marin last week.
This was reported by Euractiv.
Topi Simola, senior vice president of the Finnish state-owned railway company VR-Group, said that the company cannot donate trains and make its own decisions regarding the four "Allegro" trains.
The high-speed trains, which were originally purchased to service the commercial line between Helsinki and St. Petersburg, are owned by Karelian Trains LLC, a joint venture established in 2006 that is equally owned by Finland's VR-Group and Russian Railways (RZD).
The trains ran from 2010 until March 2022, when "Karelian Trains" was put on the US sanctions list.
Simola said that negotiations about the future of trains are currently ongoing. "Currently, from the point of view of VR, the situation is simple. The fate of the trains requires a unanimous decision from the owners of Karelian Trains," he added.
Earlier, the mass media reported that the former general director of "Ukrzaliznytsia" Oleksandr Kamyshin personally discussed the transfer of trains with Sanna Marin during her visit to Kyiv.