The Ukrainian Railways joint-stock company (Ukrzaliznytsia) transported 79.6 million tons of cargo in the first half of 2025, down 11.8% compared with the same period in 2024.
Ukrzaliznytsia’s Board Chairman Oleksandr Pertsovskyi stated this while summarizing the company's performance in the first half of this year, the CFTS portal reports.
"If the current dynamics prevail for the entire year, the annual figure will be approximately 50-52% of the freight volume in the period before the full-scale invasion (2021). We are currently experiencing the lowest freight volume in the railways' history. This puts extraordinary strain on the company's ability to function because freight operations have always sustained the railway," Pertsovskyi said.
The biggest drop, 27.5%, was in coal freight volumes.
"Despite the grim figures, this is still a result. Our railroaders are fighting for every ton, laying rail lines to coal mines under UAV strikes and bypassing routes the enemy has taken control of. However, with each lost mine, volumes decrease — so far, irreversibly," he said.
There was also a 32.5% decrease in the volume of transportation of grain and milled products.
"Farmers cite the late start of the season, so we expect a certain leveling off later in the year (more grain was shipped in July). We are also working with the State Transport Safety Service to strengthen weight control enforcement and ensure that grain is not transported to ports in violation of weight standards, ‘killing roads’ with trucks," Pertsovskyi said.
Against the backdrop of a somewhat revitalized construction market, there was a 4% increase in the transportation of construction materials and a 10% increase in the transportation of cement.
Both export and domestic freight volumes decreased, with export freight volumes falling by 13.5% to 38.7 million tons and domestic freight volumes falling by 11.7% to 35.5 million tons.
"However, we managed to increase import freight volumes by 5.4% to 5.3 million tons. We succeeded in convincing important players in the fuel market to try our rail services and use the end-to-end logistics provided by Ukrzaliznytsia’s subsidiary UZ Cargo Poland," Pertsovskyi said.
"Transit freight is practically nonexistent. However, we are taking the first steps to build multimodal routes. The first transit container ferries have been dispatched to Georgia, opening up new opportunities for transit to Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan. In the future, we expect to see an increase in transit volumes from China through the Middle Corridor," he said.
