Karelian Trains

Oy Karelian Trains Ltd was a joint venture agreed on 23 November 2006 between Russian Railways and VR Group, the Finnish state railway, each holding a 50 percent share, headquartered in Helsinki. The company operated the Allegro high-speed international passenger service between Helsinki and Saint Petersburg, launched on 12 December 2010 using dual-voltage Alstom Pendolino trains, cutting travel time between the two cities from five and a half hours to three hours twenty-seven minutes across four daily departures each way; it carried 280,000 passengers in its first year. All operations ceased in March 2022 following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and in December 2023 VR Group assumed the venture's financial obligations, planning to redeploy the trains domestically by 2025.