Soviet-Era ‘Sausage Trains’ are Returning in Updated Form, ‘Altyn Orda’ Portal Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 2 – In Soviet times, people living in rural areas often took trains to distant cities in order to get butter, sausage and other foodstuffs that they could rarely find in their villages and towns. This practice became so widespread that Soviet citizens typically referred to the vehicles carrying them as “sausage trains.”

            Now, the Kazakhstan’s Altyn Orda portal says, “the sausage trains are back” in the form of cars and buses carrying Russians not into cities in their own country but instead into neighboring ones like Kazakhstan for gasoline and food (https://altyn-orda.kz/putin-vernul-rossii-kolbasnye-poezda-teper-rossiyane-edut-za-benzinom-i-produktami-v-kazahstan/

            The portal says that “in the summer of 2026, residents of the Samara, Saratov and Orenburg regions began to increasingly come to Kazakhstani gas stations. Particularly noticeable is the flow of cars with Russian numbers in Uralsk and other border cities” in northern Kazakhstan.

            The reason this is happening is “extremely simple” – gas in Kazakhstan is almost half the price of gas in the Russian Federation and there are no long lines at as stations, except perhaps when cars from the Russian Federation arrive in larger numbers than anyone anticipated.  

            The picture of Russian cars crossing the border to buy gas in Kazakhstan is “almost symbolic: a country that has called itself an energy superpower for decades has to send its citizens to find and buy gasoline” for their cars in neighboring countries – and while they are there, to buy food and other consumer products as well.

            Vladimir Putin has often spoken about “the return of Russia to its former greatness,” Altyn Orda says. And in one sense, he has “fulfilled this promise: Russia really has returned to the past,” including now with an updated version of the notorious “sausage trains” of the late Soviet period.

            “And while Russian television continues to defeat NATO, Europe and the entire collective West, residents of Samara or Orenburg are solving a much more practical task: travelling to Kazakhstan, refueling and loading the trunks of their vehicles with food products as well,” the portal says.