In Crimea, due to fuel shortages, passenger transportation to trains has begun to be canceled; they have to travel 200 km by taxi

Passengers of train No. 184 Sevastopol - Murmansk were forced to get to the departure station in Kerch on their own after the carrier did not provide the promised bus. According to the Sevastopol publication ForPost, the reason for the cancellation of the flight was the lack of fuel.

Following recent attacks by Ukrainian drones on the railway infrastructure in Crimea, the train traffic pattern has been changed. Tavria trains traveling to and from Crimea temporarily begin and end the route in Kerch, and passengers must be transported between cities by buses.

However, on the night of June 22, this scheme failed. The bus, which was supposed to leave from Sevastopol to Kerch (about 200 km) at 1:15, did not arrive. Two hours before departure, passengers were informed that there would be no transport, and they were offered to either get to Kerch on their own or return their train tickets.

According to passengers, a taxi ride cost approximately 12 thousand rubles per car. At the same time, train No. 184 is one of the few routes that goes beyond Moscow without transfers, and runs only once a week. “To say that everyone in the waiting room was shocked is an understatement. They didn’t provide any additional information,” one of the passengers clarified.

The FSUE "Crimean Railway" explained to journalists that transporting passengers and informing about changes is the area of ​​responsibility of JSC TC "Grand Service Express". The company itself, in response to a request from journalists, said that the bus was not delivered due to problems with fuel. The company stated that passengers were transported by a third-party carrier, which was unable to complete the flight due to a lack of fuel at Crimean gas stations. The carrier also did not rule out the repetition of similar situations in the future. As follows from the company’s response, the organization of bus transportation depends on the capabilities of road carriers and external circumstances. Passengers in the company were advised to complain to the carrier (the name of the company is not specified) and demand compensation from him for the taxi.

This is the first known case where restrictions on fuel sales on the peninsula directly affected passenger transportation. Earlier, the authorities of Crimea and Sevastopol completely stopped the sale of gasoline and diesel fuel to the population, explaining the decision by the need to save resources after a series of Ukrainian attacks on facilities in the Kerch Strait area and the fuel infrastructure of the peninsula.

Even during the blackout of 2015–2016, when Crimea was left without electricity for six months for several hours a day, the authorities did not stop the sale of fuel to the population and there were no reports of disruption to passenger traffic due to a lack of gasoline.