Freight Forwarders Stop Services to Russia, Belarus

Numerous large freight forwarders have suspended services to Russia, due to the restrictions imposed from the war that country has been waging on Ukraine, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday (March 3).

One of those is Kuehne + Nagel, out of Switzerland, and another is DB Schenker from Germany. Both of them issued customer advisories that they’re stopping deliveries to and from Russia by air, land and sea. Additionally, Denmark-based DSV said it would also suspend deliveries to Belarus.

“Knowing that today’s decision to suspend transport to and from Russia and Belarus will further add to the supply chain disruption and complexity for our customers, we want to underline that … we are doing our utmost to alleviate the negative supply chain effects from these measures,” DSV said in a notice on Thursday.

Freightos, a digital cargo marketplace, said the disruption in services and transportation connections to Russia will further drive up shipping costs around the world, alongside the rising oil prices.

There are some airfreight carriers already introducing war-risk surcharges in a bid to cover the rising operating costs, according to the report. Freightos said a diversion of ocean freight shipments to other ports is already causing pileups at origin ports in Europe and other places, which could increase congestion and higher rates.

There have been a great amount of companies and countries laying down bans on Russian activity, including crypto exchange Binance, PYMNTS wrote.

Binance said it won’t allow cardholders from numerous sanctioned Russian banks to use them on the platform, and also said it has restricted access for sanctioned individuals who have an involvement with the Ukraine attacks.

See also: Binance Won’t Take Sanctioned Russian Banks’ Cards on Crypto Platform

Binance is among a minority of crypto exchanges actually doing this, as many other crypto exchanges haven’t decided to take any anti-Russia action.

Finance experts say this defies actions of mainstream institutions, and also blunts the efforts of the Western countries to hurt Russia after its invasion and military action against Ukraine, which started last week.