Ban on oil shipments via Lithuania to Kaliningrad takes effect

VILNIUS – The EU's embargo on most Russian oil imports, announced six months ago, comes into force on Monday. 

Depending on the specific commodity code, part of the sanctions take effect on December 5, with the rest to be enforced on February 5, 2023. 

Lietuvos Gelezinkeliai (Lithuanian Railways, LTG) says it does not yet have information on Russia's planned shipments of such cargo and what the quotas for these products are.

"Unfortunately, we don't have the information you are interested in yet," LTG Cargo spokeswoman Kotryna Dzikaraite told BNS.

Lina Laurinaityte-Grigiene, spokeswoman for the Lithuanian Customs Department, was also unable to comment on the types and quantities of Russian oil cargoes that will be allowed to be shipped to Russia's Baltic Sea exclave of Kaliningrad via Lithuania.

"The function of the Customs is only to check whether the data declared by the carrier and the actual data about the cargo are correct. We only receive information about the cargo a few hours before it arrives in Lithuania," she told BNS. 

Lithuanian Prime Minister Ingrida Simonyte said in an interview with Reuters NEXT last week that the sanctions on Russian oil would affect about 50 percent of the cargo transit to Kaliningrad via Lithuania.

The sixth package of sanctions against the Kremlin, which comes into full force on December 5, bans most oil imports from Russia. The embargo does not apply to oil imported by pipeline as a concession to landlocked Hungary.

The ban will also cover Russian fuel imports from February 5.

LTG Cargo, the freight subsidiary of LTG, has said it transported around 2.3 million tons of various cargoes to and from Kaliningrad via Lithuania between January and October this year.