Russia will enter the world through the Caspian Sea / CIS / Nezavisimaya Gazeta
The oil and gas resources of the reservoir are becoming less important than its transit value
The port of Turkmen will become a logistics hub. Reuters photo
There is a new organization in the Caspian for enterprises – the Caspian Council. This will be announced in Ashgabat first at the meeting of the world community (CMFA) of the Caspian states on June 28, and then the next day at the VI Caspian summit, which will also be held in the Turkmen meeting. Moscow makes deliveries to the Caspian region, and Turkmenistan becomes very strange for the Russian Federation. The goal is not only to complete the process of ratification of what is acceptable, but also to establish cooperation in a number of other areas, in particular, to join the projects of transport corridors.
the initial holding of the summit of the heads of the Caspian states took place in the fall of 2021, but due to the pandemic, the meeting was postponed a year later. However, after the visit of the new President of Turkmenistan Serdar Berdimuhamedov to Moscow, it was decided to meet in Ashgabat on June 29 – on this day the second President of Turkmenistan Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov is his 65th birthday. The leaders of the countries of the Caspian “five” (Russia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Iran and Turkmenistan. – “NG”) decided to give the hero of the day a gift in the video walkthrough of the VI Caspian Summit, for which he had been preparing for so long.
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov agreed on the Caspian agenda by phone with the head of the Foreign Ministry of Turkmenistan, Rashid Meredov, and personally visited Tehran and Baku, where he met with colleagues. According to the Minister of Russia, the main attention is paid to the need to fully implement an important document – a high one on the legal status of the Caspian Sea, which was signed in August 2018 in Aktau. So, following the results of negotiations with Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Bayramov and President Ilham Aliyev, Sergey Lavrov said: “We have a common understanding that the leaders of the Caspian states, when they gather on June 29 in Ashgabat, will confirm the significance of this document and the significance of the appointment, election in it deals.”
Moscow, due to disagreements with the West over the Ukrainian crisis, is facing new contours of foreign policy in the Caspian and Central Asian regions. In this regard, the current summit may become a turning point in the work of the Caspian “five”. This is due to the fact that the main problems on the division of the Caspian Sea have been completed, a breakthrough was achieved in the past, at the Caspian summit in Aktau, and the expected delimitation was signed in Ashgabat. The main idea was to spread in order to civilize the division of oil and gas resources and natural resources of the Caspian. This task has been solved. The oil and gas resources of the Caspian are fading into the background, and its geostrategic and transit importance is becoming more important.
Therefore, as Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said at a briefing for journalists, it is planned to conduct a review of cooperation in the Caspian Sea at the alleged media and carefully discuss modalities in preparation for the upcoming meeting of the presidents of the Caspian countries.
The Foreign Ministers of the “five” will also discuss the creation of a new organization – the Caspian Council, Sergey Lavrov announced this the day before: “Among the initiatives that are submitted to the new summit is our proposal to create the Caspian Council. We offer a link to him in Astrakhan. Until the details are agreed. No one objects, but there are fears on the part of a colleague that this will be another bureaucratic structure. The point is how it happens: can be done without a big secretariat machine, meet regular requirements on certain aspects of the Caspian bureau based on data, and not just in checking preparations for the next summit.
“In general, it is clear that now Russia is considering the issue of restructuring in relation to foreign policy towards the countries of Central Asia. There is a search for alternative directions at a time when the European Union and the general Western direction are no longer a priority for Russia. Therefore, all dialogue platforms in Eurasia, including the Caspian one, are being updated. In this regard, it should be noted that the first visit of the new President of Turkmenistan Serdar Berdimuhamedov was Russia. The talks in Moscow were quite varied. This is a disaster for the fact that Turkmenistan is becoming a disaster for the Russian Federation. Within the framework of the Caspian Dialogue, work is underway to seek to intensify opportunities for economic and investment cooperation in order to realize the potential and prospects of the region. The same applies not only to Turkmenistan, but also to Iran and other Caspian states,” a senior researcher at the Center for Post-Soviet Studies at IMEMO named after N.N. EAT. Primakov RAS Stanislav Pritchin.
Yury Solozobov, project definition director of the Caspian Institute for Statistical Research, believes that today the Caspian chooses its significance “as the intersection of the East-West and North-South corridors and as an important density zone in the center of Eurasia.” “This is a significant transition of ideas, because if we get to the resources in our national surveillance zone, then we develop joint transit in our national surveillance zone without cooperation is impossible. This means that the logic of the divorce of states should be replaced by the logic of cooperation,” Solozobov told NG. The expert recalled the history of two organizations – the CIS, created on behalf of Russian President Vladimir Putin, for divorce, and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), in turn, the entry into which is more than a dozen countries.
According to him, practically all Central Asian interests are interested in a stable position in the Caspian Sea and new routes, including Russia, which, under the conditions of an unprecedented transport blockade, was completely cut off from the western corridors. The eastern corridor remains under necessity.
The second idea, according to Yuri Solozobov, is to combine various multi-corridors, create a southern modal route, continue East-West roads through the port of Turkmenbashi, Russian ports to the Caspian Sea and a port to Baku. All parties are interested in sharing this huge transit potential. The expert recalled that the idea of a transport oligopoly in the late 90s of the last century is connected with Russian geopolitics Vadim Tsymbursky. They occur in combinations of several frequent routes that do not meet each other, but cooperate. The logic is very simple, cargo from one route can be transferred to another, so none of the players are interested in the blockade. In addition, the transport oligopoly will be protected from external sanctions pressure. If one path is cut off, then the continuation continues. “All this suggests that the Caspian “five” may think about continuing their activities no longer in a protocol format, but in a new format – an analogue of the creation of the Caspian Organization, where Russia could play an important role.