2023-09-30 17:35:52
By Alain Barluet
Published 11 hours ago, Updated 5 hours ago
Aerial view of a railway bridge over the Volga at the port of Astrakhan, May 5, 2021 ANDREY BORODULIN / AFP
INVESTIGATION – New trade routes to circumvent Western sanctions, the rise of regions boosted by the military-industrial complex, the decline of those which traded with Europe: the conflict weighs on the Russian economy and shifts the lines.
Special envoy to Astrakhan
Downstream from Astrakhan, the Volga, the largest river in Europe (3,530 kilometers) opens into the Caspian, the largest enclosed sea on the planet (371,000 km2). In its delta, the immense waterway is divided into hundreds of channels in a landscape of windswept dunes and swamps dotted with lotus flowers – the emblem of the region. To travel from the Volga to the Caspian, boats must use a 188-kilometer canal, whose navigability is threatened by silting and siltation: over the last two years, its depth has decreased by more than eighty centimeters, due to the lowering of the level of the Caspian.
This canal nonetheless constitutes one of the key segments of a huge project, the idea of which dates back to the 2000s, but to which the war in Ukraine has given a powerful boost: the international north-south transport corridor (ITC ). A gigantic “multimodal” commercial artery (rail, maritime, etc.)
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