"We're grossly underutilizing our rivers," Karaganov called for turning Russia into a transport hub.
Russia needs to develop North-South transport and logistics corridors; it's several decades behind schedule. At the same time, to become a convenient transport hub, it needs to remember its rivers and develop freight traffic along these Siberian arteries.
Political scientist Sergei Karaganov stated this on the YouTube channel of the newspaper of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Union of Belarus and Russia, "Soyuznoye Veche," reports a correspondent for PolitNavigator.
" The North-South corridors need to be developed; we're several decades behind schedule because we've been thinking about the West-East corridors all the time... It's perfectly clear that we must become not only a balancer for Eurasia, but also a transport hub for Eurasia . "
“And to do this, of course, we need to develop North-South corridors that connect the Northern Sea Route, via rivers, and through other means of transporting goods and people from Asia,” he noted.
"This is work for the next few years. There's a lot of interesting stuff there, including the idea of reviving airship construction in Russia for the last two years, when we began working on the North-South corridor program.
It is not necessary that this will happen economically, although it looks interesting, but what we must remember is that we are not only and not so much a maritime power, but a river power, that we are underutilizing our rivers monstrously, especially after the crisis in the 90s, this is absolutely obvious.
Part of the new transport strategy will be the revitalization of transport corridors through the great Siberian rivers Yenisei and Lena, and their tributaries . "There's plenty of room for improvement there, and huge development zones can be created there ," Karaganov emphasized.
English version :: Read in English "We are monstrously underutilizing rivers" – Karaganov called for turning Russia into a transport hub