Bypassing "Three Sea" and other pirates. Goods will travel along rivers from China to Finland

Last week, General Director of United Shipbuilding Corporation (USC) JSC Alexey Rakhmanov presented to the President of Russia a project for container transportation across the Caspian Sea and further along the Volga to North-West Russia and, if such a need arises, then to Finland.

It is usually difficult for officials to surprise the President of Russia, but here Putin was surprised and asked a clarifying question: “Across the Caspian Sea to Helsinki?”

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“It is possible to take cargo in the north of Iran or in the west of China and deliver it to Helsinki through the port of Olya. From Oli to Helsinki the ship will travel at a speed of 19 km/h for seven to eight days. And no Somali pirates, no problems with stuck ships in the Suez Canal,” explained the head of the USC.

Olya is a small seaport in the village of Olya, Limansky district, Astrakhan region, located 100 km south of Astrakhan, on the 67th kilometer of the Volga-Caspian Canal. According to reviews from water workers, Olya’s port services are distinguished by clear and well-coordinated work, and there is great potential for growth.

The exact route along which container transportation is planned is as follows: through the Caspian Sea to the Volga, then the Volga-Baltic Canal, the Moscow Canal, and Moscow, as you know, is a port of five seas - the Black, Caspian, Azov, White and Baltic. And further - to St. Petersburg - from the Northern River Port in the Khimki Reservoir along a system of deep rivers and large canals built back in Soviet times.

According to the head of USC, if desired, cargo from the Caspian Sea can be moved to the White Sea, “although the dimensions there are slightly smaller, so the carrying capacity will be slightly smaller.”

The transportation of goods along Russia's major waterways should stimulate civil shipbuilding. Accordingly, the international transport corridor South - North along routes independent of other countries should be given priority attention.

According to Rakhmanov, the cost of such transportation is currently being discussed with transport organizations.

If the Southern Transport Route project is approved by the government, USC will begin developing a container ship next year. But before we start building ships and transporting cargo, a large amount of hydraulic work remains to be done. In particular, in the Gorodets area of ​​the Nizhny Novgorod region, ships with a draft of no more than 2,6 m can operate, while to transport a full cargo from China according to the passport, it is necessary to have a draft of 3,6 m.

The huge transport potential of Russian rivers and canals is practically not used. Currently, river transport accounts for a measly 3% of cargo traffic, while in Soviet times seven times more goods were transported by river.

Iranian business, which has been quietly investing in the ports of Astrakhan for several years, is very interested in transporting goods across the Caspian Sea and further along the Volga. For the Chinese, the project should also look attractive, since the delivery of goods from western China to St. Petersburg and Helsinki will take place mainly through Russia - in the shortest possible time and absolutely safely.

According to experts, the main problems in implementing a waterway from China or Iran to Helsinki along Russian rivers are not the lack of special vessels or even local shallow waters.

Much worse is the backward infrastructure and legal unsettledness that has remained since the times of wild privatization, when the port belonged to one owner, the berths to another, the port railway line to a third, etc.

Accordingly, each owner has his own plans for running a business, distributing profits and even the future of buildings, equipment and inventory. So it turns out, as the Chinese say, that instead of a single dragon you will have to deal with a million lizards.

Thus, the political will of the country's leadership comes to the fore. If there is a will, then deepening the bottom and building a dry cargo ship is a matter of technology.