Observation of the Week: Russia Breaks Through with Transport Corridors to the North and South
June 23, 202509:00
While various agreements of intent were signed at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SIEF), which took place in St. Petersburg last week, including in the logistics sphere, we drew attention to Russia's breakthrough intentions in the development of transport corridors. Firstly, to make year-round transportation along the Northern Sea Route (in the plans). Secondly, to revive river transportation on the North-South transport corridor (also in the plans). And thirdly, to build the New Silk Road through the Siberian regions (in even more distant plans).
Year-round Northern Sea Route
As Rosatom's special representative for the Arctic, Vladimir Panov,
a special high-Arctic class fleet .
Naturally, they plan to implement the project not alone, but
together with a Chinese company , which hopes that in this way it will be able to significantly reduce the delivery time of its goods to Europe.
A joint venture between Rosatom and the maritime operator New New Shipping has already been created and has allegedly already begun designing the future fleet.
The first container ship of a special Arctic class is promised to be launched
no later than 2027. That is, in essence, if these plans are to be believed, then
year-round transportation will begin on the Northern Sea Route as early as 2028 (well, at least in a limited mode).
True, at the moment
the project participants have not yet decided which shipyard to build the fleet at , and because of this they cannot even calculate the cost of the work.
Plus, of course, in the question of timing,
we also need to take into account the sanctions restrictions against Russia and the fact that foreign companies that closely cooperate with Russian colleagues can easily be suspected of helping to circumvent sanctions and also fall under restrictions...
Siberian Silk Road
Siberian regions such as Tuva, Khakassia and Krasnoyarsk Krai are counting on
China agreeing to run the northern branch of its large-scale logistics project, the New Silk Road, through their territory .
To this end, they have already even
a memorandum of cooperation between themselves.
In principle, the project really does look promising:
China will thus gain access to the Northern Sea Route , and the Northern Sea Route, as noted above, can significantly reduce the delivery time of goods to Europe (at the very least, there will be no need to go around the continent via the Suez Canal or get stuck on the busy BAM and Trans-Siberian Railway in Russia).
At the same time ,
the project also affects Mongolia . That is, it is expected that Chinese goods will go to the Northern Sea Route in transit through its territory.
But in order for such a northern branch of the New Silk Road to really happen, it is necessary, for example,
to finally complete the railway line in Tuva “Kuragino-Kyzyl” (it was pompously built 1 km back in 2011, after which the work stopped and was never resumed).
And most importantly, it is necessary
to develop and lay the North Siberian Railway , the possible length of which is estimated
at 2 thousand km .
Needless to say, these works will clearly take more than a couple of years?..
North-South River Corridor
In Ulyanovsk they are planning to build
a port logistics complex on the Volga . The corresponding agreement has already
.
And since the Volga flows into the Caspian Sea, the project will allow
the inclusion of the Ulyanovsk Region and other regions of the Volga Federal District (VFD) in the North-South international transport corridor , one of the priorities for Russia in the context of sanctions.
And not just turn it on, but
revive river transport along the route , thus removing some of the load from the railways, on the one hand, and on the other, making it possible
to organize multimodal delivery of goods using rail and river transport (well, and with the connection of road transport, of course).
The only thing is that in order to implement the project it is necessary
to maintain the Volga-Don Canal, which is tending to become shallow, in a normal state and to build
a sufficient number of river fleets in all their diversity of vessels .
By the way, they haven't even thought about specifying when exactly the river hub in the Ulyanovsk region is planned to be launched...
