A women sits inside the new Express Rail Link (ERL) train enroute from KL Sentral to KLIA2 airport, April 30, 2014. The International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) has given the green light for Kuala Lumpur International Airport 2 (KLIA2), the countr
A women sits inside the new Express Rail Link (ERL) train enroute from KL Sentral to KLIA2 airport, April 30, 2014. The International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) has given the green light for Kuala Lumpur International Airport 2 (KLIA2), the country's new airport terminal for budget airlines, to start operations on May 2, the New Straits Times reported. REUTERS/Samsul Said REUTERS/Samsul Said

Russia will suspend its train services to Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Tajikistan for a year, starting from December 14. This was announced by Russia's state run Federal Passenger Company.

A statement put up in its website said it is suspending the services because they are not financially viable. The statement said "a significant decrease in the volume of international rail travel has led to the ineffective use of engines and trains", reports RFERL. At the same time, Russian railways will continue to operate trains to Moldova, Belarus, northern Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.

The decision Ukraine is not surprising as Russia has a strained relation with Ukraine. Russia is also treated like an aggressor by the official government in Kiev, after Moscow annexed Crimea and has been allegedly supporting the eastern separatists. On the other hand, Russia is trying to build cosy ties with other ex-Soviet republics such as Tajikistan and Kazakhstan, who are members of its Customs Union.

Ukraine To Run Russia Services

Meanwhile, Ukrzaliznytsia, the Ukrainian Railways announced that it will mainatin its rail services with Russia intact, despite the latter's railways decision to cancel the train service to Ukraine, a spokesman told Tass News. "Ukrzaliznytsia will continue the rail service in winter the way it is doing now," the spokesman confirmed, according to a Tass report. At present, 19 trains operate from Ukraine to the Russian territory, including two trains to Crimea. Ukraine's most crowded train is No. 1/2 Kiev-Moskva express. Now it will run on alternate days instead of the current daily service, the spokesman said. Kazakhstan's railway company also said its 10 trains linking Kazakh cities with Russia will stay. The Tajik Railways Company also confirmed that its trains will run the services to Russia.

New Lines To Bypass Ukraine

In the meantime, reports from Moscow said Russia is planning to build new railway tracks that will bypass the Ukrainian territory. Russia's Transport Minister Maxim Sokolov said on Thursday that there are four Russia-Ukraine border crossing points. The new project will seek to avoid those points, reported RIA Novosti news. Currently, several patches of rail lines that link Moscow to southern Russia cut through the Ukrainian territory, as in Russia's Voronezh and Rostov regions. In gcat, Chertkovo of the Rostov region has one part of its railway station in Russia and another part in Ukraine, Xinhua reported.