Azerbaijan, Lithuania to expand railway cooperation

By Azernews

By Rashid Shirinov

Azerbaijan and Lithuania have agreed to further expand their bilateral cooperation in the railway sector during the Baku meeting of the head of Azerbaijan Railways CJSC Javid Gurbanov and the Ambassador of Lithuania to Azerbaijan Valdas Lastauskas.

This was said on September 15 to Trend by the spokesperson of Azerbaijan Railways Nadir Azmammadov.

The sides discussed the prospects of future cooperation between the two countries, including the railway project Viking.

“Lithuanian Ambassador highly assessed the large-scale reforms carried out by Azerbaijan Railways,” Azmammadov said.

The combined train Viking started to run on the route Ilyichevsk (Ukraine) – Minsk (Belarus) – Draugyste (Lithuania) with a total length of 1,766 kilometers in 2003. Participants of the project are Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia, and Bulgaria, Romania and Turkey joined later.

In February 2016, Ukraine and Lithuania signed a Memorandum on joining the container train Viking to the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route from Europe to China, passing through Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan.

Later, in May 2016, Azerbaijan signed a Protocol on the participation of Azerbaijan Railways in the project of the international container train Viking.

In the past 10 years, Viking train has traveled 2.3 million kilometers and has transported more than 4.8 million tons of cargo. The project is constantly developing: transportation possibilities are introduced in international forums and other events.