Russia will come out to the world through the Caspian Sea

Yuri Solozobov, the Regional Projects Director of the Caspian Institute for Strategic Studies, believes that the Caspian Sea and the Caspian region today expand their significancy as «the crossroads for the East – West and North – South transportation corridors» and as a crucial zone for assuring stability in the center of Eurasia. «This is a significant shift, because we can extract natural resources in our national zone, but we cannot be engaged in the joint transit through our national zone without cooperation. It means that the «divorce logic» currently underpinning the positions of the countries should be replaced with the «cooperation logic», Solozobov said in his interview to the NG. The expert reminded the stories of the two associations – CIS created for divorce, according to Vladimir Putin, the President of the Russian Federation, and Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which has a queue of the countries willing to ascend.

In his opinion, practically all the stakeholders in Central Asia are interested in stability in the Caspian region and in new transportation routes. This includes Russia, which found itself completely cut-off from Western transportation corridors in the context of unprecedented transport blockade. As for the Eastern corridor, it remains questionable.

According to Yuri Solozobov, the second idea is the association of different corridors, creation of the Southern multimodal route, continuation of the East – West road via Turkmenbashi port, Russian Caspian ports and Baku. All the parties are interested in using this huge transit potential together. The expert reminded that the transportation oligopoly idea was offered by Vadim Tsymburky, the Russian geopolitician, at the end of 1990s. It means association of several transportation routes, which do not compete against one another, but cooperate among themselves. The logic is very simple: cargoes from one route may be moved to another one, so none of the players are interested in blockade. Besides, such transportation oligopoly will be protected against external sanctions-related pressure. If one route is cutoff, others continue to function.

«All this tells us that «the Caspian five» may start thinking about continuation of their cooperation in a different format – for example, about establishing a new Caspian Partnership Organization, in which Russia could be an important player».