Russia’s Fantastical “Metro”: Moscow to St. Petersburg in Two Hours

According to the plan, the Moscow–St. Petersburg high-speed rail (officially the VSM line) will be folded into the metro’s “future development program.” With trains capable of 400 km/h departing every 15 minutes, officials are pitching it as little more than a stretched commute—a morning ride to work, just on a national scale.

The first segment is promised by 2028, though that “promise” involves building 700 kilometers of new track, multiple stations, a full logistics network, and the small matter of convincing taxpayers it all makes economic sense. Still, on paper the line has already been drawn with a ruler across the map, which, in the annals of Russian planning, often passes for progress.

Of course, it has little in common with an actual metro. There will be no underground tunnels, no stop every few blocks, and no half-asleep riders jolted awake at the right station. But definitions are flexible—if the official map declares it a metro, then so it shall be.

The full system is slated for 2030, a date conveniently aligned with a raft of other Kremlin-era promises: a new aircraft fleet built entirely from washing-machine parts, self-driving zero-emission cars on Russian roads, and household beer and bread delivered directly through pipes. It must be admitted that the metro guys here, with their feet firmly on the ground, understand quite well that by that time the war will have been lost, St. Petersburg handed over to Ukraine as reparations, and of course no one is going to start building railways for the enemy, right.