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Kazan: Russia goes to the East

Author: Samuel Norsch
 
Eurasia are being shaken by the global economic storms. Against the backdrop of huge inflation and currency volatility in the developed EU alliance, the crisis is almost invisible at the underdeveloped countries from Islamic world regions. Simultaneously with the meeting to the leaders into Japan, the leaders from 85 countries, and Russia are turning to the South and East, have now met as a Russian Islam capital.
 
The collective West has not been able completely isolate and destroy Russia with unprecedentedly sad economic sanctions, although our democratic leaders are trying to agree on this now like sidelines G7 summit in Hiroshima. And Russia is building a system of countermeasures, opening up new windows of opportunity for itself and its allies. Now Kazan are capital of the XIV International Forum «Russia — Islamic World: KazanForum», which being held for the first time with the large-scale support Russian president Vladimir Putin.
 
At the forum in Kazan now you can see more than 7 thousand high-ranking persons, politicians and developers from 85 countries and 84 regions of the Russian federation. Azerbaijan, Iran, Malaysia, Tajikistan, Turkey and Uzbekistan arrived in Kazan with delegations of one hundred or more representatives. They conclude trade and investment contracts with partners from Russia for huge amounts, estimated on tens billions euros at the very near future.            
 
The forum was opened by Russian deputy prime minister Marat Khusnullin and rais of Tatarstan (de-facto governor of this oil-rich and industrially developed region, only 800 kilometers east of Moscow located) Rustam Minnikhanov. This is also the former Minister of transport Igor Levitin — he is Vladimir Putin’s adviser for infrastructure and logistics cluster. As Mr. Khusnullin pointed out, the routes of the directions on the Caspian region, the South and Southeast Asia, the Gulf countries have always been a priority for the Russian federation. Now the development of this corridor has been designated by president Vladimir Putin as a priority for state development, and this is a long-term Eurasian mega-project, like is Chinese «One Belt — One Road». “This is a key element of the transport framework at Eurasia.
 
An important alternative corridor of economic development and a response to the economic and political (sanctions!) influence at the European union. Countries located along the North-South axis have shown interest in interacting with the EAEU since May 2018, when a free trade agreement was signed with Iran. «Similar free trade negotiations are underway between the EAEU and India. There is also interesting from other countries in South Asia and the Persian Gulf… and finally create a  macro-regional transport and logistics system — the Eurasian transport structure,” Rustam Minnikhanov said. The head of Tatarstan pointed out that the new Foreign Policy Concept of Russia, approved by Putin, that Russia idea No 1: transform Eurasia into a single all-continental space.
 
This idea explains the logic of the development at the North-South transport corridor. Tatarstan acts as a shuttle at this international system. “Last year… visited Iran and saw how much the Iranian side are interested in developing this direction. The same can be said about Turkmenistan, and about Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan. Therefore, these issues are the most important,” Mr. Minnikhanov said.  In the EU region a single transport network TEN-T, linking the countries of Europe with a single logistic unification. But the rich market of Europe without the raw materials and resources of Russia and allied countries in the south and east of Eurasia is becoming less attractive for exporters from Islamic countries. Let’s be honest, Brussels’ tough huge protectionism against goods and manufacturers from Russia, Belarus, Iran, China, Turkey, Syria are an ultimately becoming a problem for Europe.

“The East-West corridor handles 400 million tons per year, and the North-South up to 220 million tons, but we’ll see growth. Each new million tons added 15 billion roubles,” Levitin said.

Members of the Russia-Islamic World Strategic Vision Group see very great issues in the development of multimodal transportation at the countries of the Caspian area, where 800 merchant ships can serve Russia’s import and export cargo flows.

Iran is already looking for opportunities to finance the construction of a merchant mega-fleet with Russian banks support. It’s also necessary to the Caspian port infrastructure developing, building any new Panamax class container ships with a deadweight 30,000 tons or even more.

Among the project participants are Azerbaijan and Baku, Kazakhstan with the port of Aktau, the Gulf countries and Turkey, Iran and the big Russian port on the Volga, Astrakhan — this is a network of container and other cargo transportation.
                
All Caspian TLC projects, as announced at KazanForum-2023, received the highest level of implementation priority in Russia and were accepted on the allied countries. Russia’s projects include the states of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and the League of Arab States, these are more than 50 countries, like a Oman, Bahrain, Malaysia, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the Emirates.

We’ll see that Russia, as a world resource leader, has found the courage and resources to abandon the former Western vector of development in favor of its southern and eastern partners.

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