From 28 June, the international “Basarabia” train — the only direct rail link between Kyiv and Chisinau — switches to a daily service. The change was announced by Ukrainian Railways (Ukrzaliznytsia), which says the decision came after lengthy negotiations with the state company Railway of Moldova. Until now the train ran every other day, so a traveller had to fit their plans around a thin timetable. From 28 June, the service will run every day.
For Ungheni residents the change is not abstract: the train stops at Ungheni station, on the way between Chisinau and the border with Ukraine. Moving from “every other day” to “daily” in practice doubles the number of days on which a resident of Ungheni can board the train — either towards Chisinau or eastward, towards Kyiv — without waiting for the “right” day in the schedule.
What changes, in concrete terms
Beyond frequency, Ukrzaliznytsia announces two new features. First: a new children’s carriage leaves on the first daily run, refurbished and fitted out by the Ukrainian operator together with Visa, designed for families travelling with young children. Second: from 29 June, the departure time from Chisinau moves to 19.52, instead of the former 17.42 — an adjustment intended, the Ukrainian side says, to connect better with other services, including for passengers who arrive in Chisinau by plane.
The train, listed in rail timetables under numbers 351 and 352, is an overnight service with compartment and open-plan sleeping carriages. It covers about 720 kilometres between the two capitals, with stops along the way and border checks on both sides of the Moldovan-Ukrainian frontier.
Why the train does not “change wheels” at Ungheni
A clarification is needed here, because Ungheni is known precisely as the place where trains “change their wheels.” That operation — lifting each carriage to swap its bogies from the European gauge (1,435 mm) to the Russian one (1,520 mm) — is carried out only on the westward direction, towards Iasi and on into Romania, because two different track widths meet there.
On the eastward direction, towards Ukraine, things are different: Moldova and Ukraine use the same broad gauge, inherited from the Soviet period. The “Basarabia” train therefore runs without a bogie change on the Kyiv–Chisinau section; the longer stops at the border are for the border-guard and customs control, not for a technical operation. This distinction matters, so as not to confuse this service with the entirely separate project to electrify the line from Iasi, which concerns the connection towards the west.
The Moldovan side: what we could and could not confirm
The detailed announcement came from the Ukrainian side. The Railway of Moldova, the operator on our bank, is cited as a co-decider — Ukrzaliznytsia says explicitly that the new schedule was agreed “after negotiations with the CFM management” — but on the Moldovan company’s official channels there was, at the time of checking, no announcement of its own dedicated to the switch to a daily service.
Two practical details remain, for now, unclear from official sources, and should be checked at the ticket office or at CFM information before a journey: the exact time the train stops in Ungheni under the new schedule, and the current ticket price in lei. The figures CFM displayed at the time of checking were those from the service’s 2022 relaunch (the Ungheni stop around 20.21 towards Kyiv and 07.53 towards Chisinau, with tickets from about 870 to 1,260 lei) — useful reference points, but ones that may change with the new timetable from 29 June.
A line with a recent history
The direct Kyiv–Chisinau rail link is not old. It was relaunched on 5 November 2022, after a 24-year break, in the midst of the war in Ukraine. At that point, according to the United Nations Population Fund, more than 700,000 people had entered Moldova from Ukraine, and the train was also used as a safe route for refugees; at the Chisinau station, volunteers met travellers with first-aid help. The journey took about 18 hours then.
Since that humanitarian relaunch, the route has become an ordinary link between the two capitals, and the switch to a daily service is the next natural step. The operators present it as an improvement in mobility, not as a refugee-related measure.
For Ungheni, which has always defined itself as a crossing point, the news adds to the other rail threads running through the town — towards Chisinau, Iasi, Kyiv. This time, the eastward thread becomes a little more frequent: not every other day, but every day.