Trade: Russia and India inaugurate a new sea route
Narendra Modi and Vladimir Putin in 2018. Since the start of the war in Ukraine, India has not participated in economic sanctions against Moscow.
AP - Manish Swarup
Text by: RFI Follow
1 min
From Saint Petersburg to Bombay in fourteen days.
This is the promise of the new maritime route between Russia and India which was inaugurated on Sunday 12 June.
A project imagined by Moscow, Tehran and New Delhi for a long time, but which the war in Ukraine and Western sanctions have accelerated.
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With our correspondent in Bangalore,
Côme Bastin
Two Russian container ships departed from the port of Astrakhan on the Caspian Sea.
Their cargo of laminated wood pallets will pass through the Iranian port of Anzali, will be transferred by road to the Gulf, before reaching the Indian port of Nhava Sheva, not far from Bombay, by sea.
A two-week journey.
long time project
This north-south corridor is a long-standing project, revived by the international context, explains Nandan Unnikrishnan, specialist in relations between India and the post-Soviet space: "
Since the 2000s, India, Russia, Iran and other countries are discussing an international north-south corridor.
This is indeed the only way to ship Russian goods to India.
The war in Ukraine undeniably contributed to accelerating the project.
Iran is under sanction and now Russia too.
The two countries therefore want to move forward as quickly as possible.
I think commercial interest in this new route will grow rapidly
.
»
Gas and oil
This corridor should allow India to receive all kinds of goods from Russia, including gas and oil.
Iran, for its part, hopes to benefit from the taxes levied on transits through its territory.
Since the start of the war in Ukraine, India has not participated in economic sanctions against Moscow and has even started to import Russian oil.
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