Container shipments to Europe via the Caucasus.

Various sanctions have appeared in Russia, of which there are quite a lot, and logistical problems have also appeared. Because of all this turmoil, transit rail cargo began to bypass Russia. And in order to continue transportation to Europe, bypassing Russia, new transportation routes through the Caucasus and Asia began to be created.

Cargo transportation is carried out through the Black and Caspian Seas. It can also be noted that thanks to this path, more deliveries were made in the first couple of months of this year than a year ago. I would like to say that at one of the meetings, Alexei Shilo, Deputy General Director of Russian Railways JSC, noted that at the moment there is a "revival" of transit container routes bypassing Russia.

That is, this technique for transporting goods has existed for a long time, but it has not been used as actively as it is at this time. But at the moment it is happening so fast that in the first two months, almost 3,000 containers were transported along the TRACECA (transport corridor). Also, Mr. Shilo specified that Russian Railways OJSC is quite actively loading the Samur border crossing, as well as the Azerbaijani railway infrastructure.

All this is done to ensure that the loading of other goods is not possible. Also this year, the plan for the transportation of containers has been drawn up for a much larger volume than last year. Among other things, Aleksey Shilo claims that if logistics returns to normal, then at such tariffs that exist at the moment, this method of transportation will be very affordable. I would like to note that transportation from China to bypass Russia is currently minimal. But all this has its development, and fleeting. For example: transportation in 2021 amounted to 25,200 TEU on transport traffic, and on the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway in 2020, only 11,700 TEU, and in just the first six months of 2021, 11,000 TEU. Therefore, having these data, we can note that transit traffic from China in 2021 increased by 1.1 million TEU. And we can note that shipments are constantly increasing. Thus, the Xinhua office informed that the first train bypassing Russia had already been sent by a new route. And not just by rail, but by land and sea. This route passes the Caspian and Black Seas, and the direction of cargo goes to Germany through Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic.

I would like to say that domestic markets that study the Caspian region, the borders of Eastern Europe and Western Asia note that transportation in the North-South direction has little difficulty. Also, as we have already noted, transit of 3,000 containers has already passed by Russia, and we all understand how difficult it was. After all, adjusting to something new is not easy enough.

Vyacheslav Saraev speaks about this. The first head of TransContainer, Viktor Markov, pointed out that the North-South direction has some problems. And we see that not a single person mentions the difficulties. From the foregoing, it follows that despite the imposition of sanctions, container cargo does not stop working, but on the contrary, it increases. And also having problems with cargoes are solved, you just have to get used to the new one.