On 4 December, the first president of Kalmykia, the sixth president of FIDE, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov again flew to Tehran, where he had a meeting with Mahdi Safari, who was previously the Iranian ambassador to Russia. Kirsan Nikolayevich said that, in his opinion, it’s time to begin promoting these projects. As Ilyumzhinov told our correspondent, the idea of building a shipping channel between the Caspian Sea and the Azov-Black Sea basin is very old and even ancient.
Today, the issue of shipping between the Caspian and the Black Sea, without which it is impossible to talk about the further development of the transport and transit potential of the Caspian region, is again on the agenda. The outdated water transport system of the region does not economically correspond to the modern logistics of Russian and foreign freight carriers. The solution to the problem could be the completion of the Manych Shipping Canal, better known as the “Eurasia Channel”.
For the first time, the idea of a transit route connecting Kazakhstan and other Caspian states with the Azov-Black Sea basin through an 800-kilometer canal with six locks was put forward by Kirsan Ilyumzhinov in 2008. Then, at the international investment forum in Sochi in 2009, Ilyumzhinov presented a concrete plan for completing the construction of the Manych Shipping Canal. According to the idea of Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, it is the Manych Canal that should become the main logistic element of the Eurasia international channel.
The Kalmyk leader’s project was immediately noted and supported by Vladimir Putin. The construction of the Eurasia Channel can bring many both economic and geopolitical benefits for the Russian Federation, as well as for neighbouring republics of the former USSR.
