The State Railway Administration of Ukraine (Ukrzaliznytsia) has said that contrary to reports on social media there has been no large cut to the number of trains formed by Belarusian railways going to Ukraine.

Ukrzaliznytsia told Interfax-Ukraine that due to emergency circumstances affecting railways in the temporarily occupied territory of Crimea and a threat to safety of train movement and passengers, Ukrzaliznytsia from December 27, 2014 reduced the routes of all trains going to Crimea, including train pair No. 100/99 Minsk-Simferopol, which travelled through to Zaporizhia-1 station.

The decision to restrict train routes to Crimea was made under the decision of Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council in line with the rules of technical exploitation of Ukrainian railways.

Ukrzaliznytsia decided to extend the route of train pair No. 100/99 to Novoaleksiyivka station in the period from June 1 to September 1, 2015 and the period was prolonged until September 21.

Taking into account the absence of a request from Belarusian railways to extend the route of the train to Henichesk station, train pair No. 100/99 Minsk-Henichesk was not discussed.

As for train pair No. 330/329 Baranovichi-Zhytomyr, the service was scrapped by the company which operated the train – Belarusian railways administration – as passenger numbers were too low. The losses of Ukrzaliznytsia from this train between January 1 and February 25 totaled over UAH 150,000 alone.

As for trains formed by Belarusian railways to Kherson and Odesa, Ukrzaliznytsia said that train pair No. 94/93 Minsk-Odesa adheres to its schedule.

Ukrzaliznytsia decided to agree to the routes of the new additional train pairs of Belarusian railways No. 284/283 Baranovichi-Minsk-Kyiv-Mykolaiv-Kheron for the summer period of 2015 and despite the losses of Ukrzaliznytsia of over UAH 4.5 million in the first seven months of 2015, it was decided to retain train pair No. 384/382 Baranovichi-Minsk-Kharkiv.