Huik told ERR that Estonia can process around 150 trucks a day in both directions at the Luhamaa and Koidula crossing points due to sanction checks. However, Russia only has the capacity for around 40 trucks and the same number of cars.

On Wednesday around 4 p.m., according to the online booking system, there were a total of 495 trucks in the queue of vehicles at the Luhamaa border crossing, 321 of them in a live queue. There were 73 cars in the queue, 39 in a live queue. The next free prebooked slot is on July 11.

There were 291 trucks in the queue at the Koidula border crossing at the same time, of which 187 were in the active queue. It is not possible to make a reservation until July 10.

"The number of cars is still very high at the moment and they have to wait quite a long time – about five days in a queue to cross the border," said Huik.

"The most important part is the live queue number. If we take Luhamaa, for example, there are 300 [trucks] on the live queue today, and if Russia takes 40 or 50 [a day], that's actually a week's worth of cars that are waiting," he explained.

The official pointed out that since Estonia has an electronic queuing system, cars do not have to physically wait at the border for a week. "They can park inland, in car parks, in businesses. They only come to the border when they have a real time of departure. In reality, many cars are there for a day or two, no more."

In comparison, in neighboring Latvia which does not have an electronic booking system, there was a queue of vehicles almost 20 kilometers long at the end of May.

"At the moment, it is the pace on the Russian side that determines the number of border crossings. Our capacity is still well beyond what the Russian side is working on. Why the Russian side is so slow – I don't know," Huik said.

He said that the Russian side prevents vehicles from crossing the border. "Last weekend, Russia closed its border crossing at Luhamaa for 3.5 hours because the gates of the crossing were being painted," he said, highlighting one example. "They do close the gates from time to time, but that was on exactly June 23, when the Narva border was closed. We very seriously monitored the behavior of the other side, and it really turned out that the gates were closed so that two people could start painting. These gates can also actually be painted in the open position."

"I think there was also messaging on the Russian side to deliberately obstruct the movement of cars and to create discontent among drivers on our side in particular," Huik said. Another example he raised was that last week a bus passed through the Estonian border crossing, but was then left waiting for 16 hours to cross the border into Russia.

"For cars, the wait has now got even worse. The queue may not be a day or a day and a half, but may even go up to two or three days if the Russian side takes control of a bus or a car and does nothing else. The Russian side is characterized by the fact that it is sometimes faster, sometimes slower, and because of this it is not possible to calculate exactly how many cars can pass in a day," said Huik.

Over the last two weeks, long queues have also formed for pedestrians trying to cross the border in Narva. The Russian side blames and increase in people crossing, but data from the Estonian Police and Border Gaurd show this is not the case.

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