Port for Belarusian cargo to be built in Russia's Murmansk Region - governor

MINSK. Aug 4 (Interfax) - A new port to handle Belarusian cargo will be built in Murmansk Region, the northern Russian region's governor, Andrei Chibis said.

"We held a working meeting with Russian Transport Minister Andrei Nikitin in Moscow where we discussed the implementation of current projects and made key decisions on the further development of the Murmansk transport hub and the region's transportation system," Chibis said on Telegram.

"We agreed to start preparations on a project to expand the throughput capacity of the railway in order to build a new port for Belarusian cargo in future. This is part of work on the president's order to develop the Murmansk transport hub," he said.

Belarus has been redirecting exports to Russian ports since the beginning of 2022, when it lost the ability to ship potash fertilizer through Lithuania's Klaipeda port. Belarusian exporters now use about 20 Russian ports to ship their products, with most of the cargo traffic going through ports in Leningrad Region.

In the spring of 2024, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko announced the start of Belarusian export shipments through the Northern Sea Route, saying the "prospect for work on the NSR is good."