Moscow, April 15 (Interfax-Ukraine) – Ukraine and Russia are planning to extend the relaxed customs control that exist on the Moscow-Kyiv-Moscow trains to the Moscow-Donetsk and Moscow-Kharkiv trains, Russian Transport Minister Igor Levitin said at a briefing after a meeting of the Ukrainian-Russian intergovernmental commission.
He said that this would require an increase of the number of customs officers and frontier guards.
The sides plan to organize a rail link for high-speed passenger trains on the Moscow-Kyiv route with speeds up to 160-170 kilometers per hour. Levitin said that the countries would work on increasing the speed of passenger trains to 200-250 kilometers per hour. A separate rail link is to be built for the purpose.
Ukraine and Russia expect to obtain the results of design and survey work by 2013.
"The link could be built in four years," Ukrainian Vice Premier and Infrastructure Minister Borys Kolesnikov said. The link will be 320 kilometers long in Ukraine and 510 kilometers long in Russia.
Levitin added that after studying the necessity to build a separate link, and if a positive decision is made, trains will be able to attain speeds of 300-350 kilometers per hour and it will take four hours to go from Kyiv and Moscow.
"It will require amendments to tariff policy, which will be an incentive for the reduction of the stops in Russia," the minister said.
The sides are also considering the separation of passenger and cargo routes. There are alternative routes that could be used by cargo trains to free up the passenger links and increase train speeds.
The countries also agreed to increase the number of flights between Moscow and Kyiv from 70 to 100 per week. Kolesnikov said that this would lead to a rise in passenger flow by 20%.
