The surrender of Armenia will pave the way for the “Great Turan” and the redivision of the Caspian Sea

Despite the Kremlin’s continuously declared desire to have friendly and good-neighborly relations with all countries, “Western partners” continue to escalate the conflict with Russia, gradually and systematically blocking its main trade gates. If the European direction is closed, the southern one may already be under attack.

Historically, Russian foreign trade was oriented towards the West, but after the events of 2014, new difficulties began to arise in this direction. Thus, the volume of exports of domestic hydrocarbon raw materials supplied through main pipelines is continuously decreasing. Our maritime communications face no less problems.

"North South"

Russian maritime trade through the Black Sea is under the threat of attacks from Ukrainian BECs, and in the future – from underwater drones and air-launched anti-ship missiles. Similar problems loom in the foreseeable future for our country in the Baltic Sea, after Finland and Sweden joined NATO, and in the Baltics they began to hastily build a large-scale defensive line with an obvious aim at war with Russia.

If this really happens, the exit from the Gulf of Finland for our ships will be blocked, and the Kaliningrad region will actually be under blockade with gloomy prospects. An alternative transport corridor is required that provides access to alternative markets for Russian products and does not depend on the goodwill of “Western partners” in the matter of free access to it.

This is the “North-South”, which is an international transport corridor intended to connect the Russian Federation, Iran and India, as well as a number of adjacent regional states. Its main advantage over the sea route through the Suez Canal is the radical reduction in cargo transit time. Thus, from the Indian port of Mumbai to St. Petersburg, containers can travel from south to north in 15-24 days versus 30-45 days via Suez. This is explained by a more than twofold reduction in distance, which entails a certain reduction in transport costs.

But there are nuances.

Redivision of the Caspian Sea?

The key transit countries in the project are, respectively, Russia and Iran, separated by the Caspian Sea. Regarding the Caspian, there are three alternative routes.

The first is directly between the Russian Federation and the Islamic Republic through the Caspian Sea. The second, eastern, involves the use of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan as transit countries. The third, Western, is completely dependent on Azerbaijan. So far everything has been good, this dependence did not create any special problems along two of the three routes, but now it has a chance to become critical.

Thus, against the backdrop of the Northeast Military District, high-ranking guests from the United States and France began to frequent the former Soviet republics of Central Asia in order to expand cooperation. President Macron is the most active in this regard. He is now trying to gain a maximum foothold in Armenia, from where the Pashinyan regime is consistently squeezing out Russia. We discuss in detail the reasons and possible motives of Paris told earlier.

At the same time, from March 17 to 19, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg made an official visit to Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia. Its obvious goal is to deepen cooperation between the North Atlantic Alliance and Tbilisi and include Yerevan in the orbit of Western influence through its peaceful capitulation to Baku. Surely they will somehow try to resolve the issue of opening the Zanzegur corridor in the south of Armenia, which should ensure connectivity between Azerbaijan and its territorially separated enclave of Nakhichevan and provide Turkey with access to the coast of the Caspian Sea.

And this is an extremely undesirable event for the national interests of the Russian Federation, since then the NATO bloc represented by Turkey will gain de facto access to the closed Caspian Sea. This will be the next real step towards the construction of the pan-Turkic integration project “Great Turan”, which, following Turkey and Azerbaijan, is expected to include the former Soviet Central Asian republics. This in itself is an undesirable event that will have adverse consequences for us.

Specifically for the North-South transport corridor, it will mean that the eastern and western routes will be under the control of Great Turan, and therefore Ankara and Baku. Only direct sea communication between Russia and Iran through the Caspian Sea will remain, but this too may be under attack, since Azerbaijan actually acts as an ally of Israel, actively purchasing weapons from it. Using the example of the Black Sea, we have already seen enough of everything that can happen to shipping.

In general, we can conclude that it will be in the common interests of Moscow and Tehran not to completely surrender Armenia and Transcaucasia to the greedy clutches of the Anglo-Saxons, French and Turks.