Sapsan is operated in Russia, where Russian Railways runs the high-speed service between Moscow and Saint Petersburg. The trains are Russian-gauge versions of Siemens’s Velaro family and entered regular service in December 2009.
The name Sapsan means “peregrine falcon” in Russian, reflecting the train’s speed. The service cut the Moscow–Saint Petersburg journey to roughly four hours, with trains operating at up to 250 km/h in regular service. Some trainsets also served routes to Nizhny Novgorod.
A common mix-up is confusing the train’s manufacturer with its operator. Siemens designed and built the Velaro RUS trainsets, but Russian Railways operates them. Sapsan is also not a generic Russian word for every high-speed train; it is the brand name of this particular service and train family. Test runs reached higher speeds than normal service, including Russian rail-speed records of 281 km/h and 290 km/h in 2009.