Ust-Luga is a settlement and railway station

Train station

A train station, also called a railroad station or railway station and often shortened to just station,"Station" is commonly understood to mean "train station" unless otherwise qualified. This is evident from dictionary entries e.g...

 in Kingiseppsky District

Kingiseppsky District

Kingiseppsky District is an administrative district , one of the 17 in Leningrad Oblast, Russia....

 of Leningrad Oblast

Leningrad Oblast

Leningrad Oblast is a federal subject of Russia . It was established on August 1, 1927, although it was not until 1946 that the oblast's borders had been mostly settled in their present position...

, Russia

Russia

Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

, situated on the Luga River

Luga River

The Luga River -See also:* Shum Gora, an archaeological site near the banks of the river...

 near its entry into the Luga Bay

Luga Bay

The Luga Bay is a shallow bay near the southern Russian coast of the Gulf of Finland. It is free of ice 326 days a year. Kurgalsky Peninsula separates the bay from the Bay of Narva to the west, while the Soikinsky Peninsula separates it from the Koporye Bay to the east. The Luga River empties into...

 of the Gulf of Finland

Gulf of Finland

The Gulf of Finland is the easternmost arm of the Baltic Sea. It extends between Finland and Estonia all the way to Saint Petersburg in Russia, where the river Neva drains into it. Other major cities around the gulf include Helsinki and Tallinn...

, about 110 kilometres (68.4 mi) west of St. Petersburg

Saint Petersburg

Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea...

.

Ust-Luga is the site of an important coal and fertiliser terminal, constructed at a cost of $2.1 billion. Construction works started in 1997, in part to avoid dry cargo shipments through the Baltic States

Baltic states

The term Baltic states refers to the Baltic territories which gained independence from the Russian Empire in the wake of World War I: primarily the contiguous trio of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania ; Finland also fell within the scope of the term after initially gaining independence in the 1920s.The...

, and were accelerated at the urging of President Vladimir Putin

Vladimir Putin

Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin served as the second President of the Russian Federation and is the current Prime Minister of Russia, as well as chairman of United Russia and Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Union of Russia and Belarus. He became acting President on 31 December 1999, when...

, who inaugurated the new port facilities in 2001. The 3,700-metre approach canal is deep and capable of accommodating ships with a capacity of 150,000 tonnes and more. In May 2008, Putin confirmed that Ust-Luga will be the final point of the projected Second Baltic Pipeline, an oil transportation route bypassing Belarus

Belarus

Belarus , officially the Republic of Belarus, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe, bordered clockwise by Russia to the northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest. Its capital is Minsk; other major cities include Brest, Grodno , Gomel ,...

.

As of 2005, the population of Ust-Luga does not exceed 2,000, but the port administration expects it to grow to 34,000 by 2025. This would make Ust-Luga the first new town built in Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union.